Jack's Blog TEP 305

For my blog today, I decided to watch the TED talk by Conrad Wolfram who argues for the teaching of math using computers. As someone who has "struggled" a great deal with math I spent my childhood telling myself I wasn't good at math so it could excuse the fact that I didn't understand math the way it was being taught to me. I genuinely used to think that there were people with math oriented brains. Granted, there are people who are just naturally better at math, just like there's people who are naturally better at basketball or tennis. But I wouldn't say there's such a thing as a "math oriented brain". Wolfram talks about the falling interest in math education, however our world is becoming more and more dependent on technology, which consequently means the world is becoming more and more dependent on math. Wolfram argues in this TED talk that the reason why people are feeling the way I just described is because we're not teaching math in sc...

 As education feels as thought its shifting towards a more "business" model its becoming increasingly more apparent that the powers at be seem to "not care" about the school districts that seem to be, based on test scores, not producing future business leaders. However when Ken Robinson say that if these struggling school districts and demographics are assisted in the way the should be we could add $1 trillion to the US GDP, when I think about this Im ask myself, what gives? Robinson argues that its not that the powers at be don't try to help these struggling demographics, it's just that they're doing it the wrong way. To sit a child down and expect them to work on an assignment. They're not interested in diligently and quietly is a difficult ask. It's not that children can't do these things, in fact, there are many children that thrive in these types of environments. But this is not a "one-size-fits-all" solution. Robinson argues t...