MathPad

I went to a lecture at my alma mater tonight called "When the pen is mightier than the keyboard" given by Andries van Dam of Brown University. What an incredible talk! The main idea was that the interface between a person and a computer (generally a mouse and a keyboard) hasn't changed in over 40 years, but that we should be investigating ways to make the computer more "natural" to use. This is a very popular idea right now. The iPhone, even with its unpopular, single-service capability, is a very hot item right now, and is probably the most wide-spread example of good implementation of a computer that's "natural" to use.

I've heard this rant many times, though, from many different people. (You know who you are.) And, while it's definitely both valid and interesting, it was not the most important part of the night for me.

Van Dam spoke about using computers more effectively in the classroom with the use of a program he and his colleagues at Brown are working on, called MathPad. He demonstrated (in real time, even) the incredible capabilities of this program, which uses a stylus rather than a keyboard to enter information. (Thus making the program more natural to use; like you're actually writing math on paper rather than typing it in as on a calculator or in mathematics modeling software like Maple.) The program recognizes your writing, translates it into mathematics, and solves problems or graphs equations or runs mathematical models with a quick strike of the pen. It was very cool. (When's the last time you heard an entire auditorium ooh and gasp for the creation of a graph?)

This lecture made me very excited about technology in education. I really believe that by using technology, teachers are able to truly reach most students of the current high school population. Their entire lives they are inundated by technology, after all. It's how they communicate and how they relax. Why shouldn't it be incorporated into how they learn?

Despite these strong opinions, however, I have yet to include so much as training in using calculators into my classroom. I'm beginning to feel like a hypocrite. So I'm making it my mission to try to incorporate some form of technology into my lessons at least once each week.

... These resolutions are beginning to stack up.