This is so true. Love the video.

Interesting that programming is seen as a general way to move students towards generalization and abstract reasoning. Teaching programming seems to be a challenge for some of the middle school teachers. Do they then teach programming to their students and does this change the general way that they teach math and science? How do you measure impact on teachers and on students? Very interesting video, thanks!

The rocketry video at the beginning really captured by interest! Can you explain how that is an example of teaching students to generalize using computational thinking? It must be very difficult to assess changes in abstract reasoning. Have you been able to demonstrate an impact on student learning?

Excellent video. Looks like a real learning and teaching tool.

Thanks for your comment and questions! We measure student and teacher progress by collecting responses throughout the instruction. Then we use APOS analysis to determine what level of mathematical thinking, action, process or object, is being demonstrated for each mathematical concept. We look at participants responses over time and record progress or digress through the levels.

The rocket launch is part of our lesson on functional behavior. Specifically, we are examining the characteristics of a downward facing parabola. The instructional treatment seeks to push learners to develop mental frameworks or images for a particular math concept, through engaging them in writing programs to explore essential characteristics associated with the concept. We feel that describing these characteristics in mathematical language is an important step.We also guide learners to make conjectures and develop logical arguments about the relationships between concepts. Finally, we engage in activities, e.g., a rocket launch, that apply the concept in order to give participants the opportunity to interiorize the conceptual process.

Programming is a natural marriage with math. It seems that if you have teachers who already understand math and computer science you can do wonderful things in learning math. Computer Science is one area that currently is a high need for many school districts. What does it take to train the teachers to become well versed in computer science as to then use it to write material that utilizes this knowledge in math. Do you have data that shows how students retentionl is measured? I come back to the fact of what happens to teachers who want to use this system but they do not have access to computers for thier math classes? I would like to be part of these math classess all the same because they are very interesting.