Timeline for Using slides in math classroom
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 7, 2011 at 19:14 | comment | added | Andrew Stacey | I thought my comment was clear that I was talking about my experience, not yours. My apologies that that wasn't the case. I shall stop arguing generalities and simply say that I know that I could not do this. I could not rely on my "native wit and ability" (of which I clearly have little) to get me out of any chance mistakes that I might make and that I fear the resulting process would merely confuse the students. Of course I try to show them how maths is really done but I do so in a controlled fashion to ensure that I am showing them what I really want them to see. | |
| Nov 7, 2011 at 16:25 | comment | added | Thierry Zell | @Andrew: feel free to throw around the word incompetent when talking about your lecturers, but I need to make it crystal clear that this qualifier does not belong in my story. The lecturer was purely and simply brilliant, and do not think for a second that my point of view was atypical in the class: I was second to last in Physics for most of that year, yet it was the only year of my life I ever enjoyed taking Physics. My classmates who helped me study for this class got even more out of it, and all of us were in awe of that man. | |
| Nov 7, 2011 at 8:50 | comment | added | Andrew Stacey | Thierry: And I learnt a heck of a lot from an extremely incompetent lecturer. But that doesn't mean that I should be equally incompetent. I wonder how all the other students in your class felt. You may not have noticed, but you're pretty exceptional! What you describe in your second comment is not making mistakes. There is a distinction between showing all the steps on a particular, well-chosen example, and allowing yourself to be sloppy. Just because I use slides doesn't mean that I don't do the former, but (I hope) it minimises the chance of doing the latter. | |
| Nov 6, 2011 at 19:42 | comment | added | Thierry Zell | @Andrew, continued: I don't tend to make mistakes on the board, but I try to forget as much as possible how to solve specific problems, so that I may very well start out on completely the wrong track. I think this is more valuable than slickly solving every problem being thrown at you, since it resembles the students' own experiences when facing a new problem. | |
| Nov 6, 2011 at 19:38 | comment | added | Thierry Zell | @Andrew: you're very free to disagree, of course. But I learned a tremendous amount on how to fix algebraic mistakes from a fantastic Physics teacher who could never write two lines without dropping a sign or losing an exponent, yet could go back and (1) explain how he could tell there was a mistake in the result and (2) track down every single one, and thus accurately derive any physical law you care to name. He did not do it deliberately, he was really that careless. I don't do this in my own classes, but I've always been in his debt and I am sure to seize opportunities when they arise. | |
| Nov 6, 2011 at 18:45 | comment | added | Andrew Stacey | I disagree that there is a didactical value in making mistakes in a lecture. There is a didactical value in showing how one might go about solving a problem including all the mistakes that you might have made or that you did make when you first tried to solve the problem by yourself. | |
| Nov 5, 2011 at 14:14 | comment | added | Thierry Zell | @Jaap: of course, especially since finding a mistake in a matrix computation can take such a long time. | |
| Nov 5, 2011 at 10:13 | comment | added | Jaap Eldering | Indeed there's didactical value in making mistakes. But e.g. in my case of a simple calculation error when inverting a matrix, I think the time consumed to find the error outweighs to advantages. | |
| Nov 5, 2011 at 3:03 | history | answered | Thierry Zell | CC BY-SA 3.0 |