My Math professor showed us this video in class Monday night and I wanted to show it to the folks at school, but I can't access youtube. I thought I'd embed it here and see if I can access it that way. Whether you're a teacher or not, you should watch it and tell me what you think.
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I couldn't watch the whole thing because I was yelling too loudly at the screen. The funny thing is - her algorithms are NOT internationally known. They are considered the US Customary methods. Ugh. Ignorance. Does she have any data to back up her claims?
AND - one more thing: The Everyday Math methods embrace mathematical thinking as a whole...everything adds up (no pun intended) so the students have a better sense of numbers and their relations. I love Everyday Math. If it had been taught when I was a kid, I would probably have done a lot better in High School and College Math.
Okay, so I watched the whole video...hoping I could figure out what you girls are so upset about...and just couldn't find it. I don't think she was advocating the use of ALL these algorithms, since she kept emphasizing the simplicity of the standard algorithm for each multiplication and division (which is the one I know). I never used a calculator until 7th grade math, and don't see why you'd ever need to. When I got to UK, I took calculus 2 my first semester, and my professor's only rule was: No calculators on quizzes or tests. I'd definitely say that was a stickking point for a lot of people in my class. Standard multiplication and division doesn't take very long if you know how to execute it on a piece of paper, and it gives you a fraction based answer (for division especially) that is ALWAYS more accurate than a truncated decimal answer. Why do you think we use a computer to store pi? Its because the world wouldn't work right if people chopped pi off to 3.14 or even 3.1416 when doing engineering calculations. That's why we symbolize it on paper, so that it can be factored into a real-life equation at a huge number of decimal places. That type of calculation goes all the way back to the fractions vs. decimals arguament that is a major part of the reason I wasn't allowed to use a calculator in calculus.....and neither should kids in elementary school.
Well, PETER, we're upset because she (much like the parents we deal with) seems to think that the US customary method is the only efficient way to do math. If you're like us, you were good at math in school and you were quickly able to memorize the steps to long division or two by two multiplication. However, for many students, it's not as easy as memorizing the steps, they need to know HOW the steps work. That's where Everyday Math comes in. Partial Products and Partial Quotients may not be as quick and easy as the traditional method, but they force kids to write out each little step on paper so they can think through their answers. It also better prepares them to do these algorithms mentally. Mainly I was upset because she has no idea what she's talking about. No school in their right mind would teach the Everday Math methods WITHOUT teaching the traditional method alongside it. She gives teachers absolutely no credit for deciding what to teach. We live in a changing world, where people in the work force are required to work in groups, allowed and encouraged to use tools, and need to be able to perform mathematical operations quickly. There is a happy medium here, and going back to the traditional way of teaching, where students have to work through thousands of problems - and the ones who don't know it work through them wrong a thousand times - just doesn't work anymore.
Okay. I wasn't trying to say that I never use calculators. There's a TI-82 on my desk right now. I'm mostly trying to say that the lady in video seemed to emphasize that the standard method was indeed the most efficient, and I agreed with her in that respect. I should point out for anybody reading this who is not associated with our local situation that I am NOT a teacher, you ARE a teacher, and the bottom line is that you surely know a heckuva lot more about it than I do.
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