Math+151

//**Post your ideas for improving success in Math 151 here. ("Success" means success in learning.)**// Dick Youngflesh: In covering the subject of numerical bases and other cultures' counting systems, I tell the class that we will pretend that we are a Stone Age tribe living in Australia and only have three numbers, one, two and many. We pretend that we are a hunting party looking for kangaroos. We send out a row of the class to scout a valley on the other side of the hill. They report back that another tribe is hunting in that valley. We say "What? That is our hunting grounds and no other tribe should be there. How many are there in this other hunting party?" Our scouts report "Many". I look at the class and say we are "Many". So we grab our spears and rush over to the other valley. When we get there to drive off the other tribe, there are several hundred other hunters. We quickly retreat back to our village, lick our wounds, and say our number system, "one, two, many" doesn't hack it. So the class appoints me as Shaman to develop a new number system. I come back with a system, base 5, where 11111= /\ and /\ /\ /\ /\ /\=/\/ and so on. It gives the students an appreciation for the significance of a base in any counting system. //**To post an idea or comment, click on the "edit" tab above on the right.**// //**Post your thoughts.**// //**Click on "save."**//

Cynthia Rathjen: I stole 2 project ideas from Karen Walters for 151. I feel if we use projects the students must take ownership of these projects, therefore learn on more their own. One project is to research a mathematician, write up an report on him/her, give a 2-3 min. presentation about his/her accomplishments. The students then vote on "who's the man" who they would most like to be their teacher, most likely to be in a mental institute. This semester is the first semester I have tried this and I really enjoy it. Researching a mathematician actually helps the students connect with all their subjects since these guys used art, are in history, and studied many other subjects too. We had several discussions after certain mathematicians about the time periods, about their inventions and many more things. The other project ideas is to have groups of 3 or 4 teach the class. My classes will be doing this project the end of April. I have laid out a schedule for them so that there are deadlines for the group, the topic, the lesson, the class participation they need, and the homework problems they will ask of the class. I'm excited to see how this project works out!! By the way I will still get through the required sections so if someone would like to see my syllabus I will share that too. This semester I also had my students do extra credit where they went to a website to do activities like obtain quotes of math or occurrances of math from The Simpson's episodes, work out a Lewis Carroll logic puzzle, work out a crossword puzzle or do a worksheet. There is a blackboard site under Campus Connections called Quest for Math. These projects and activities are or will be posted there. This site is for math faculty to post their ideas, assignments, activities for all math classes. Please feel free to share and use the ideas.

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