Training Workshops

It took many years to get tot he point where we use technology in the mathematics classroom. Issues and attitudes abound.  At this point it is safe to say that the battle of the graphing calculator has been won. But software looms ahead, and the issues involved there are even more contentious than those for the graphing calculator.

Software, more powerful than the graphing calculators,  and producing better graphics, has several disadvantages.

• Cost. Generally recognized software packages cost hundreds per copy and are not portable. Committing to particular software can have a debilitating effect on the school budgets.
• Faculty, lacking training on the software in use, minimize the use of software, or worse, having grown up in an age without software, they rationalize its non-use.
• There is a heavy learning curve for many of the most well-known software packages.
• There is a trickle-down effect. that dampens the use, bringing about a self-fulfilling anti-software atmosphere.
• Most collegiate classrooms are not equipped with computers. Faculty are loathe to move their classes to computer labs where they must essentially abandon their traditional "chalk and board" presentations.

These problems have slowed the progress of infusing software into the math classroom.

But lingering is a haunting question once asked by Wade Ellis at an ICTCM Conference.

What will students think when they learn that there is software that DOES everything that we are teaching the students to do?

To this I add

What will they think when they find out that they already OWN software that they COULD have been taught to use?

Excel is already on the desktops of most computers, especially the computers in schools. Although Excel cannot to symbolic Algebra, is a ready and important tool in business and scientific applications, and it can be harnessed at the service of the math teacher and the math learner. But teachers will not use what they do not know.

Workshops on Excel⁴Math can help to close that gap. Excel has the advantage that there is probably no added expense for the software - it is part of the MS Office package that dominates the computer desktops.  Yet Excel gives you an environment that is customizable to your classroom needs. And once you have designed a Dynamic Interactive Spreadsheet, it is hard to go back to static methods of teaching. Software itself, once infused, can indeed have an impact on the classroom, transforming once static classes into dynamic studies. Instead of studying a single function, you can explore thousands of related functions in a flash. Instead of asking students to do repetitive, multiple examples, you can ask them to study the impact of change, looking for patterns not in an example or two, but in hundreds or thousands of examples being transformed. This changes what you can learn. Excel⁴Math Workshops can prepare the teachers to  use this exciting piece of software in new and exciting ways - without a heavy expenditure of money and time in other expensive packages.

The Instructor

The instructor is Rod Rodrigues. Rod received an Award For Excellence In The Use Of Technology in Teaching Mathematics at the 10th Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics (ICTCM) in 1997. He has been a frequent speaker at the ICTCM conferences, including some mini-courses at these ICTCM conferences.  The Excel⁴Math web site is often used by learners and faculty at University of Phoenix online, but users have now stretched far beyond the confines of UPX Online.