From: "A Watkins" Organization: University of Plymouth Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 13:37:39 GMT Subject: Good bye San Francisco. Hello Japan/Thailand/Rhodes........? A CAME MESSAGE: Hello Everyone, For the past two years I have sent you my own personal digest of the annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics (ICTCM). This year's conference, the 12th in the series, was held in San Francisco from 4 to 7 November. We were hosted by San Jose State University at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Burlingame, about 10 minutes from San Francisco International Airport, but 90 minutes from San Francisco by public transport at USD5 (approx) - unless you were prepared to pay USD60 for a one way trip to the city by taxi! Can you guess what I did? There did not seem to be as many delegates as there were in New Orleans at this time last year, but that may be a subjective impression. As usual there was a Pre-Conference Session on Thursday 4 November followed by the full conference from Friday 5 to Sunday 7 November. It was a long way for international speakers to travel, but we were represented by some 25 colleagues from the UK, Austria, Mexico, Malaysia, Japan, Israel, Singapore, Colombia and India. Together with Antonio Quesada, I chaired an International Panel of speakers. More of that later. Next year's conference will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, from 16 to 19 November. The hosts will be Georgia Perimeter College and the Hyatt Regency Hotel Atlanta, with Grace Cascio-Huston in the Chair. You can expect to be hearing from me again soon since I am again Co-Chair, with Antonio Quesada, of the Sub-Committee for International Speakers. Please think about what you might offer for next year's conference - THE event of the millennium year! Please remember that what follows is a personal reflection on the conference, it deals with the sessions I attended and participated in. Details will also be found of future conferences, at other destinations around the world, which will occur within the next two years. Further details of ICTCM-12 may be found at the following web sites: http://www.awlonline.com/ictcm/ for the full conference programme; http://archives.math.utk.edu/ICTCM/ for the proceedings of this conference, when they become available, and for all previous proceedings. Tony Watkins ********************************************************************** PRE-CONFERENCE SESSION: 4 November 1999 This pre-conference day was dedicated to exploring the 'equation': Distance Education =Distance Teaching + Distance Learning. There were four presenters followed by four 'breakout sessions' (in Europe, at least, we would call them 'workshops' or 'seminars'!) to follow up the issues raised. The presentations were given by Don Allen (Texas A and M University), Doug Meade (University of South Carolina), Pat Kinney (University of Minnesota - General College) and Michael Gage (University of Rochester). I was surprised to discover that in the USA "distance learning" seems to mean full time students on university campuses following web-based courses simply because of timetabling clashes. That is NOT what I understand by distance learning in the UK, or other parts of Europe, where we provide this service precisely because students cannot attend full time. It also seemed to imply a simple transfer of the lecturer's notes or latest text-book to the web. Again, this is not what I would have expected since we are finding in Europe, at least, that the best kind of web-pages have the least amount of "text"! What I found interesting was a demonstration of "White-Board Technology". This means a vehicle whereby a student and a lecturer may communicate in writing, and maybe by voice, through Microsoft NetMeeting. There is a "white board" electronic pad on which each writes at their respective location, together with voice communication if their systems allow. The Net then allows each participant to interact with the other, in writing and by voice. There may be configuration problems in setting up this technology, but when it is in place a genuine dialogue may take place. Everything that is written down during the interaction can be saved to a file. Cautions were raised about the ability of students who do not have "basic skills" being able to cope with this mode of delivery; about whether or not the software developers and publishers who produce much of the material will dictate the context of the curriculum in high school/college/university; about whether or not potential employers require training as distinct from learning, and competences as distinct from degrees. It is interesting, and somewhat reassuring, that the same concerns which we address also occupy the time of our colleagues in the USA. One point which amused me was an observation that "the more socialised a student is, the better s/he performs". Is this political correctness, a genuine research finding, or a conclusion that some students will cheat?! A website that may repay a visit is http://www.math.rochester.edu.webwork, or it maybe http://math.rochester.edu/webwork. I was not wearing the correct glasses at the time and I did not manage to reach the presenter before the next session began! Later I learned a slightly simpler alternative: http://webwork.math.rochester.edu/ login as "practice 1" (or 2 or 3 or.....) depending upon the current usage status. THE MAIN CONFERENCE 5 - 7 November 1999 One of the major themes explored in lectures and workshops was "flash" technology. This appeared in 1998 and is a way of "upgrading" calculators just as software is upgraded. No longer will we have to discard the calculator "box" and buy a new one when the latest applications appear. Instead, all we shall need to do is access the TI website and download what we want to our computer. The application may then be transferred to the calculator by means of the TI GraphLink. Some applications are free, others must be purchased. Bert Waites, Diana Byrne and Ed Laughbaum gave very interesting demonstrations of the power of this technology. It is amazing to realise that today's TI-89 is more powerful than the early Macintosh's of the 1980s. The TI-73, TI-83 Plus, TI-89 and TI-92 Plus all come equipped for flash technology. They are being referred to as "TI Graphing Calculator Platforms". Useful web pages are: http://www.ti.com/calc http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~elaughbaum/ Gloria Dion of the US Educational Testing Service (ETS) gave a very interesting talk about using calculators in national tests in the USA. There is a move to employ computerised tests on-line with an on-line calculator provided. Students would be allowed to use this calculator and not their own. The US military College Level Examination Programme (CLEP) will be computer delivered from 2001. The open forum sessions which had provided Gloria's data suggested that if you ask N teachers how they are using technology in the classroom, you will get N different profiles! Also a distinct difference in performance and attitude was observable in situations where a teacher told the students that it is OK to use a calculator but they wouldn't be shown how to us it, from those it which the teacher both approved of calculators and showed the students how to use them. We often forget how much mathematics we have to know in order to do a problem using the TI-89, for example. Sample questions from the US SATs and PSATs may be found at: http://www.collegeboard.org Robert Devaney of Boston University spoke about the tools available on the internet for teaching topics from dynamical systems across the curriculum. In particular he demonstrated Fractalina, Franimate and the Chaos Game. He remarked that a number of his former students were now working in Hollywood as animators of fractals for the Star Wars films! You will find more of his work at: http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS Neil Challis and Harry Gretton from Sheffield Hallam University (UK) asked, "Assesment: does the punishment fit the crime?" They addressed the way in which both technology and students' skills are evolving so rapidly that assessment style must also evolve to ensure that it continues to fulfil the objectives of grading and sorting students and encouraging their learning. More at: http://gretton.net The International Panel was an impressive array of speakers from seven different countries. Each spoke about the level they you represented (high school, college, university), gave a brief overview of their education system (i.e. centralised or regional, examination driven or not), described which technology systems are in most common use (computer algebra - DERIVE, MathCAD, Maple, Mathematica, MatLab, other; hand-held technology - TI-83, TI-89, TI-92, other) and how they are used (assignments only, examinations, with or without restriction, a mixture). They also spoke about how teachers and students reacted to the use of technology and attempted to give a realistic glimpse into the future. The speakers were: Puma Sivasubramaniam (Malaysia) P.Sivasubramaniam@education.leeds.ac.uk John Monaghan (UK) j.d.monaghan@education.leeds.ac.uk Manfred Kronfellner (Austria - University) m.kronfellner@tuwien.ac.at Klaus Aspetsberger (Austria - High School) aspetsberger@aon.at Edward Laughbaum (USA) elaughba@math.ohio-state.edu Kui-Shern Foo (Singapore) fks@np.edu.sg Shin Watanabe (Japan) watanabe@scc.u-tokai.ac.jp Nurit Zehavi (Israel) ntzehavi@wiccmail.weizmann.ac.il Luis Moreno (Mexico/Colombia) lmorenoa@data.net.mx Antonio Quesada from the USA (aquesada@uakron.edu) co-chaired the Panel with me. FORTHCOMING CONFERENCES 9th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-9), 31 July to 6 August 2000, Tokyo, Japan. http://www.ma.kagu.sut.ac.jp/~icme9/ 5th Asian Technology Conference in Mathematics (ATCM-5), 17 - 21 December 2000, Chang Mai, Thailand. http://web.reg.cmu.ac.th/actm2000 2nd International Conference on the Teaching of Mathematics (ICTM-2), 1 - 6 July 2002, Rhodes, Greece ivakalis@capital.edu ****************************************************************** Anthony J P Watkins School of Mathematics and Statistics University of Plymouth Plymouth PL4 8AA United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1752 232731 Fax: +44 (0)1752 232780 personal home page: http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/maths/CTMHOME/people.html#tw Chair of International Council for Computer Algebra in Mathematics Education (IC-CAME) CAME home page: http://metric.ma.ic.ac.uk/came/