[Since my last post, the grapple bank concept has evolved into the idea of creating an index of great math problems that already exist online. . . and perhaps elsewhere. Here's the thinking so far.]
The Online Math Problem Index (OMPI) will make it possible for math teachers to quickly find rich math problems and lesson ideas that meet the specific needs and resources of their classrooms. To choose amongst problems, teachers will be able to sort problems by how they are described and how other teachers have rated the problems on a series of criteria.
Great math problems online are numerous, but finding them and sorting through them is hard or impossible. The OMPI will make it easy. The OMPI will also include a bank where teachers and others can post new great problems or variations on old problems. This will encourage more teachers and math enthusiasts to share their materials. While not “the” solution to math education, the OMPI will be a great resource to improve math education.
The success of the OMPl relies on participation. Teachers will need to
Will teachers use OMPI as a resource? Math teachers have told me that they would likely use OMPI to find problems, provided it effectively discovers good problems. If they were to try it once or twice and come up dry, they might abandon it. This means that we don’t want to put OMPI in the hands of teachers until enough problems are linked to the OMPI and the sorting mechanism works well enough so that they are likely to have a positive experience. Before the beta launch of OMPI, we’ll want to load it with problems from at least Illustrative Math, AchieveTheCore, DESMOS (only 9 problems now), The Math Circle Problem Collection, RISPS, Dan Meyer, James Tanton, and at least a few active bloggers.
Will teachers rate problems? I’m a teacher, and I would, but I don’t know if others would. If teachers thought that rating was either (1) really helping other teachers or (2) building their own status, then they’d be more likely to rate problems. I’ve imagined that comments would be much like Amazon’s ratings. (“How many readers found this comment useful?”) And, commenters will earn credits when they post problems or when others appreciate their comments, something like Stack Overflow. Maybe, though, there will ultimately be a smallish number of well-respected raters whom teachers will follow. This aspect of OMPI’s design deserves more research and experimentation. The way OMPI returns and displays problems from a search may also have an impact on this.
Will teachers post or link problems on OMPI? Once OMPI is going strong, I expect that every math blogger and many teachers, professors, education students, and math enthusiasts will link or post their own content as a way of sharing it. In the long run, it might be most effective to play with micropayments for some content, like TeachersPayTeachers. That will require some research and experimentation, too.
Other issues that need to be tackled will be completing the overall design of the sight, deciding on what platform to build the sight and who will program it, and how to get the word out to math teachers and other potential users.
The next steps getting underway are as follows: pull together a small creative team to add breadth to the overall thinking, experiment with a prototype on a test cadre of math teachers, talk it up.
Please share this post with others who might be interested and share your thoughts here.
The Online Math Problem Index (OMPI) will make it possible for math teachers to quickly find rich math problems and lesson ideas that meet the specific needs and resources of their classrooms. To choose amongst problems, teachers will be able to sort problems by how they are described and how other teachers have rated the problems on a series of criteria.
Great math problems online are numerous, but finding them and sorting through them is hard or impossible. The OMPI will make it easy. The OMPI will also include a bank where teachers and others can post new great problems or variations on old problems. This will encourage more teachers and math enthusiasts to share their materials. While not “the” solution to math education, the OMPI will be a great resource to improve math education.
The success of the OMPl relies on participation. Teachers will need to
- use it as a resource for finding great problems,
- rate the problems on OMPI so that the sorting mechanism has good data, and
- post or link problems on OMPI so that the site becomes the Wikipedia of math problems.
Will teachers use OMPI as a resource? Math teachers have told me that they would likely use OMPI to find problems, provided it effectively discovers good problems. If they were to try it once or twice and come up dry, they might abandon it. This means that we don’t want to put OMPI in the hands of teachers until enough problems are linked to the OMPI and the sorting mechanism works well enough so that they are likely to have a positive experience. Before the beta launch of OMPI, we’ll want to load it with problems from at least Illustrative Math, AchieveTheCore, DESMOS (only 9 problems now), The Math Circle Problem Collection, RISPS, Dan Meyer, James Tanton, and at least a few active bloggers.
Will teachers rate problems? I’m a teacher, and I would, but I don’t know if others would. If teachers thought that rating was either (1) really helping other teachers or (2) building their own status, then they’d be more likely to rate problems. I’ve imagined that comments would be much like Amazon’s ratings. (“How many readers found this comment useful?”) And, commenters will earn credits when they post problems or when others appreciate their comments, something like Stack Overflow. Maybe, though, there will ultimately be a smallish number of well-respected raters whom teachers will follow. This aspect of OMPI’s design deserves more research and experimentation. The way OMPI returns and displays problems from a search may also have an impact on this.
Will teachers post or link problems on OMPI? Once OMPI is going strong, I expect that every math blogger and many teachers, professors, education students, and math enthusiasts will link or post their own content as a way of sharing it. In the long run, it might be most effective to play with micropayments for some content, like TeachersPayTeachers. That will require some research and experimentation, too.
Other issues that need to be tackled will be completing the overall design of the sight, deciding on what platform to build the sight and who will program it, and how to get the word out to math teachers and other potential users.
The next steps getting underway are as follows: pull together a small creative team to add breadth to the overall thinking, experiment with a prototype on a test cadre of math teachers, talk it up.
Please share this post with others who might be interested and share your thoughts here.