The 5th Grade Common Core math curriculum is basically Rhythm 101.

After I decided to focus on 5th graders so my thesis could be part of a collaboration with an Engineering Department project, I looked up the Common Core teaching standards for 5th grade. ...Apparently a huge chunk of that standard curriculum is taken up with fractions and understanding proportional relationships between numbers, e.g. understanding why 3/4 = 6/8 and using that information functionally.

Sounds like the kind of math I do literally every time I sit down to write something on the piano. That worked out nicely :)

http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/5/introduction

More TED Talkers!

"Learning is playing, and to create something is to learn something."

Props to Eileen Murphy for showing me this video :)

So this is what I'm doing for my thesis.

It's been a while since I've posted, and a lot of research and project definition has happened since then—rather than do a full recap, I'll just share some key slides from the presentation I gave to the design faculty last Friday.

So STEM education is a problem in the US. But so are the arts. And it's been proven in countless studies that creative thinking and proficiency in things like music and sculpture correlates to better performance in STEM subjects. Schools are realizing that and are attempting to integrate "making" and creative problem solving into the pedagogy for these subjects. The new buzzword that has surfaced is...

STEAM is all about the teacher facilitating creative exploration, as opposed to just lecturing and doing assignments with the class. However, it's often tactically difficult to make the transition to a new kind of lesson planning, especially given difficult time constraints and testing performance risks during this kind of transition. Providing a low-risk and accessible activity platform for teaching these concepts STEAM-style could make life a lot better for teachers and their students.

For my thesis I'm going to be combining musical explorations with correlating math concepts, making an easily-implemented project kit for teachers. Here's a quick concept diagram of how this might work:

And the ideal picture of how this development process will break down over the next several months:

I still need to do a TON of research as to how this might work technically and which topics I should narrow this down to—if any of y'all have ideas or resources, don't hesitate to respond in the comments or at jmclean2@nd.edu.

STEM education? STEAM works better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtjuALN4qrw#t=218

Learning, just for fun.

NY Times op-ed piece:

"Students have a better chance of succeeding in a subject perceived as playful and stimulating, rather than one with a disastrous P.R. image. Fortunately, today’s online world, with its advances in video and animation, offers several underused opportunities for the informal dissemination of mathematical ideas. Perhaps the most essential message to get across is that with math you can reach not just for the sky or the stars or the edges of the universe, but for timeless constellations of ideas that lie beyond."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/opinion/how-to-fall-in-love-with-math.html

Okay, so Khan Academy is effing amazing

https://www.khanacademy.org/

Khan Academy recently launched a beta of their new "learning dashboard," which is basically a personalized online tutor. They started with math, but are in the process of developing other subject areas. Math seems to be the logical starting point for learning applications since it's so easy to understand how math concepts build on each other (Common Core standards are helping a ton with other subject areas, but that'll be for another post).

There are a couple fantastic features on its homepage that I think particularly take advantage of modern web capabilites:

1) The progress chart.

Gray means unexplored, dark blue means mastered. They figured out my concept map from a 10-question pretest. From the results, it seems like the pretest was measuring how long it took me to answer certain questions (The questions also got significantly more difficult as I went on, which might imply some sort of dynamic response thing). The map provide an important perspective on my long-term learning, and it uses a simple mechanism to show my progress: each math concept is literally a "pixel" in the picture of my overall knowledge. It doesn't do a whole lot to show how concepts relate to each other, but regarding efficiency of understanding and visual space it's absolute genius.

2) The badge/achievement system.

Badges have been floating around gamified learning for a while now and will probably stick around, because they work. Any extra motivation is worthwhile, and badges and tiny bits of affirmation help keep you around, Mr. Math Pretest Champion.

The badge system is seriously robust. You can select from a whole slew of badges and add them to a "goals" page that will "soon appear on the learning dashboard" (most of this is still in beta). The offer of small rewards for small, easily doable tasks is compelling and addictive. At least I'll be learning math instead of killing zombies. Although obviously some combination of the two would be ideal.

...and then the goal timeline thing.

There's a big opportunity for healthy classroom competition with this kind of tracking. They key would be framing it in a way that makes sure that the kid who's winning the math game isn't losing the social one.

3) Personalized lesson plan.

Based on my progress, the system generated a choice of lessons that it thought would be good for me to tackle. (If I have a human tutor/teacher, they can select the lesson choices I have). Moving away from a purely linear lesson timeline completely changes my mentality when doing these lessons. Instead of having mandatory next steps, I can choose to explore the lesson that most interests me. It's like the parent giving their kid the option between eating broccoli or cucumber at dinner: they probably wouldn't have chosen either on their own, but they still feel empowered by getting to choose what they eat.

4) Task-oriented learning.

Instead of starting with the lesson, Khan Academy starts with the test. It also provides a way to experiment and learn without previous guidance. Lessons are available on the side to help accomplish the tasks. This makes it so lessons are seen not as boring chores to get through, but rather as useful learning tools. Who would have thought?

5) Lesson reinforcement over time.

Once I passed my first lesson, I gained a level in that concept area. I can't test to gain a new level until a minimum amount of time has passed. According to Khan Academy, you learn best when you have to re-use information consistently over time. In order to make this "pixel" of my "learning picture" (remember the progress chart?) darker, I'll have to come back and prove my knowledge later.

Obviously there's still a lot more to this, and a lot will change in the near future. But overall this is a fantastic example of design, technology, and education theory working together in harmony. Aside from math, there are lots of great design lessons to be learned here. Thanks, Khan Academy!

Ken Robinson is a pretty smart dude.

The World Needs More Mathletes

For those uninitiated into the Mean Girls phenomenon, observe a dramatic scene from the single most quoted movie of our generation:

Now observe what an actual math competition looks like. Yeah, the real things are just written, timed tests. The exciting ones are the ones where you get to work in teams to solve the problems. Thrilling, right?

...Well—yes, surprisingly. I did these competitions up through high school, and they were actually a lot of fun. The speed and difficulty of the questions forced you to think creatively—it wasn't so much about the math as is was about the brain-bending challenge of creative problem solving, and you often did it collaboratively. That ability to strip a problem down to simple, solvable terms has been a huge asset in my life, and I attribute most of it to having been a "mathlete."

But here's the problem: being a mathlete isn't cool. As much great exposure we got in Mean Girls, the geeky stigma remains. Unfortunately, that stigma also extends beyond mathletics (okay, I swear that's the last pun). I recently spoke with a high school math teacher who told me that kids in his lower-tier classes are socially pressured into feigned apathy and mediocre performance. If they try to excel, they are ridiculed ("NERD!") and shunned by their classmates for making the curve tougher for the class. It's a depressing spiral that's probably contributed in some small way to the problem with STEM education in the US.

Libraries!

I love NPR. They cater to all my optimistic "the world is actually pretty great despite all that other crap" sentiments. They write a lot of articles on social progress, design, and innovation, all three of which happen to be things that I like. I click on basically every one of their posts on Facebook, so it's gotten to the point where there is little difference from my main feed and the NPR home page. This article particularly caught my social-media-photo-addicted fancy:

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217211315/with-modern-makeovers-americas-libraries-are-branching-out?utm_source=news&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130901

Libraries are redesigning themselves to be the publicly accessible forums for content creation, consumption, and inspiration they were originally intended to be. Yay! I had been focusing on the classroom as a design context, but libraries have clinched a place in the running. If anyone has any resources on library innovation or stories of great/terrible library experiences that would help me explore this further, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

On transitioning from bookshelf archives to public innovation spaces:
"If we were going to serve today's people building economic value in their communities and being creative, we had to think about the world differently."
—Ginnie Cooper, D.C. Chief Librarian, who is clearly a total badass.

Hello, friends!

This is where I will keep public record of my thought/design/life process from now until the completion of my thesis exhibition next spring. The blog will track all the research, interviews, articles, posts, videos, and other interesting tidbits that inform and inspire me as I work on this project. I'll also keep it up-to-date with everything that I make as I progress closer to what will hopefully be a beautiful and usable product that adds some sort of value to the world. For me and anyone else who's interested in learning about the design process, this should be a fun thing.