Xref: utzoo comp.ai:1418 comp.edu:964 comp.cog-eng:496 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-sdd!andrea From: andrea@hp-sdd.HP.COM (Andrea K. Frankel) Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.edu,comp.cog-eng Subject: Re: Becoming CAI literate Message-ID: <1204@hp-sdd.HP.COM> Date: 1 Mar 88 22:56:59 GMT References: <3319@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <4668@ecsvax.UUCP> <48@dogie.edu> Reply-To: andrea@hp-sdd.UUCP (Andrea K. Frankel) Organization: Hewlett-Packard, San Diego Division Lines: 67 In article <48@dogie.edu> edwards@dogie.macc.wisc.edu ( Mark Edwards) writes: >In article <4668@ecsvax.UUCP> hes@ecsvax.UUCP (Henry Schaffer) writes: >: >: There may be a new skill being developed - one which I find difficult. >:This is the ability to judge a time span from a glance or two at the face >:of the wristwatch or clock. > I agree, but until know I thought it was just my opinion. I find it > more difficult to use a digital watch. There is a base conversion > (base 60??) that must be done with a digital watch. While the > analog version is more like an icon. Perhaps there is no math > done at all. The position of the hands are roughly equivalent to > numbers, so I don't calculate anything. Maybe numbers are just too > abstract and do not really register. While my memory for pictures > is more meaningful. True story: About ten years ago, during a college "stop-out" period, I worked as a math teaching assistant at a local high school. Due to budget cuts, there were approximately n/2 classes after Christmas break, and the slower students in the classes that had been slightly behind were totally lost. Another assistant and myself held small tutoring classes in the study hall, to try to bring these students up to speed. What I discovered was a fundamental lack of grounding in basic concepts. I'm talking about "gut-level" understanding, e.g. of the difference between area and volume (which I finally got across through creative destruction of a ream of xerox paper ;@) Most of the difficulties came to light while working word problems, since they require students to think about the world and make the correlation to the mathematical concepts and formulas. Fractions were a big, big problem. And guess what? Those kids with the most problems with fractions had grown up with digital watches and digital clocks (or in a couple cases, no clocks) in their homes. Granted, this is far from a scientific sampling, but I was intrigued enough to question all my kids, and it came out to something over 85% of the kids who couldn't look at a pie chart and tell me that the red portion was about 1/3 of the pie, had digital-only backgrounds, and out of the rest of the class (who were not having serious problems with fractions) the average was only about 25%. There were a fair number of the "normal" kids who were now wearing digital watches, and had digital alarm clocks etc., but who had grown up with an analog Mickey Mouse strapped to their wrist. I bet there's some critical age interval when we assimilate that skill, of glancing at an unlabelled clock or pie chart and being able to tell what fraction of the hour or pie it represents. Myself, I'm more strongly kinaesthetic than visual, and I find it impossible to get a good *feel* for time when it's presented to me in numbers! And when I look at pie charts, larger fractions feel "heavier" to me, almost as if I were holding chunks of pie in my hands (on second thought, make that Brie ;@) The pie analogy, by the way, is how I finally got fractions taught - the students who couldn't tell me which pie slice represented a larger number had no problem telling me which piece of apple pie they'd rather be given! Andrea Frankel, Hewlett-Packard (San Diego Division) (619) 592-4664 "...like a song that's born to soar the sky" ______________________________________________________________________________ UUCP : {ihnp4|decwrl|sun|tektronix|}!hplabs!hp-sdd!andrea or {nosc|hpfcla|sdcsvax}!hp-sdd!andrea Internet : andrea%hp-sdd@ {nosc.mil | sdcsvax.ucsd.edu | hplabs.HP.com} CSNET : andrea%hp-sdd@hplabs.csnet USnail : 16399 W. Bernardo Drive, San Diego CA 92127-1899 USA