Fragments in Beijing

Last week I was a student at Capital Normal University in Beijing. I am taking a course which is a collaboration between Capital Normal University and Oslo University College. The aim of the course is to learn to create database driven websites for education, by means of tools such as HeidiSQL and CodeCharge Studio. Thus, it is a technical course with much to learn for a guy like me who don’t know more about databases and websites than what I’ve learned on my own. But it is also a course about how to create real-life solution that will have an impact on real people. Therefore, creating a website suited for the actual people we want to reach, is crucial.

The hospitality of the staff and students of Capital Normal has been wonderful. We have been taken very good care of, both in terms of the actual teaching and learning processes, the lunches and dinners, the hotel and the social parts of the week. For instance, we all went to the Great Wall together.



It was also a very fruitful week for me and my project. I notice how I tend to be overwhelmed by other work when I’m in my office, not having enough time to either think of or work on the project. Now I do have a bit more confidence in the technical parts as well as a project plan which will take me where I want to go. I have also got a few more good ideas for the project while I’ve been here.

As usual when I go abroad for work, I added a few days for holiday in the end. It is, obviously, much more cost-effective than to go on a holiday to Beijing later. I got to see Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City again. Last time I was here was in the month of December, which was very cold. This time it was possible to sit down and just enjoy the surroundings.

HPM Newsletter 73

HPM Newsletter 73 is now available. This is the newsletter of the HPM community (The International Study Group on the Relations Between the History and Pedagogy of Mathematics).

Articles and notices for future issues are greatly appreciated.

HPM Newsletter 72

The HPM Newsletter (of which I'm the editor together with Chris Weeks), has posted its 72nd issue at the HPM website.

Augmenting Human Intellect and Machine of the Year

For a short post on two more articles ("Augmenting Human Intellect" and "Machine of the Year"), see my course blog.

As we may think

I am taking a PhD level course at my institution this year, called "Fragments". I've just started on the first reading list, and am happy to see that it has some historical texts included. The first one I've read is Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" (Atlantic Monthly 1945).

"As We May Think" is a fascinating article, trying to figure out how technology may in future (as seen from the point of view of 1945) may help in the organisation of knowledge. The direction described is often very recognizable, even though Mr. Bush was obviously limited by the technologies he had knowledge of.

Particularly interesting, I think, was the "Memex" machine. This was an idea of an office desk in which was organized not only encyclopaedias and newspapers, but also personal notes, and they were connected in ways which made it possible to find them easily. However, from the point of view of the present "Web 2.0" phase of development, it is interesting to see that the information could be inserted by buying centrally produced information, by inserting your own information or by getting information from someone you knew. The idea of the single person contributing to the mass of knowledge available was not there (except, of course, by contributing to the encyclopaedias or newspapers).

The way in which we can all "instantly" contribute to the information structures was probably almost unthinkable at that time.

PM's apology to codebreaker Alan Turing: we were inhumane

There's an interesting article in today's Guardian on a long overdue apology from the British government to gay mathematician Alan Turing, who committed suicide after being chemically castrated by the government.

The story of his life is a reminder of how mathematics can have an important role in society (in this case: in war) and how homophobia may blind people and governments even when faced with genius.

Article: The emerging practice of a novice teacher: The roles of his school mathematics images

Jeppe Skott: The emerging practice of a novice teacher: The roles of his school mathematics images, Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education (2001) 4: 3-28.

From a project with four novice teachers including classroom observation and interviews, the author has chosen two episodes from one of the teachers, which sheds light on the connection between the teacher's "school mathematics images" (SMI) ("teachers' idiosyncratic priorities in relation to mathematics, mathematics as a school subject and the teaching and learning of mathematics in school") and their teaching.

The episodes can be interpreted to show that a teacher may very well do things during his teaching that clashes with his stated SMI, because other concerns are more pressing. In this article, one such concern was to build the confidence of a particular student - thus getting the right answer got more important than a full understanding of the process. On the other hand, the author worries that the actions in such situations may be copied to situations in which the more pressing concerns are not present.

The author also introduces another TLA (three letter acronym): CIP. A CIP is a "critical incident of practice", "an instance of [his] decision making in which multiple and possibly conflicting motives of his activity evolved; that were critical to his SMIs; and that were critical to the future development of the classroom interaction and for the students' learning opportunities".