Maria Droujkova

"Better question: "Why teach in schools?"" - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"Wanda wrote, in part: "As for homeschooling, I would agree in some regards and disagree in others. Like any other "teacher" and "student" one can only rise to the level of those with whom we transfer information. So - where are they really getting their information - the teacher or the research and practical life applications used by parents in teaching. The jury is still out whether this is more effective - as you cannot compare how the student would have done in the public school - if they have always been homeschooled." There are a couple of interesting issues here. The first one is the "information transfer" model of learning vs. "growth of understanding" model. If people could only rise to the level of those around them, we'd still be in caves, without fire yet! That's not what Wanda is saying, I am just bringing this in as an illustrative far-out example. But people, even young people, can not only use the collective information within their networks, but also build on it, and... more... - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I thoroughly enjoyed your essay and sent it to some colleagues to share the joy. There are a couple of categories I would add. Your two industry categories are "jobs" for other people's companies, and some of us choose to form our own companies to have added degrees of freedom, and maybe to focus on research some more with a combination of business research grants and income from projects. Then there are small, usually one to five people, non-profit research institutes that may be funded by grants, but be less restrictive than an academia job. The overheads on grants in academia are, what, 30-40%, and in a private non-profit like that, can be only 5-10%. A lot of professors actually run such shelters on the side, to minimize grant writing headaches by those extra percents of each grant's money. And if someone is in such an institute full time, they don't have to teach or foster graduate students, which a lot of people actively dislike." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I would be interested to know what you think about this list. Here is a somewhat rephrased piece from: Szydlik, J., Kuennen, E., & Seaman, C. (2009). Development of an Instrument to Measure Mathematical Sophistication. In Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education Proceedings. “The following overarching values support mathematical sophistication: 1. Understanding patterns based on underlying mathematical structures 2. Finding the same essential structure in seemingly different mathematical objects 3. Constantly making and testing conjectures about mathematical objects and structures 4. Using precise mathematical definitions of objects to provide necessary and sufficient criteria for classifying objects, to create taken-as-shared meanings, and to make arguments 5. Creating models, examples, and non-examples of mathematical objects as a way to create and understand definitions of objects. 6. Understanding relationships and structures of relationships among objects 7.... more... - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I’ve been working with Carol Seaman who defined mathematical sophistication as a list of attitudes for her elementary and middle school teacher preparation research. It is quite interesting. If you’d like, I can give you more detailed references and quotes." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"That manager attitude is a part of why book stores are dying as a class. They don't get the whole personal conversation thing. Maybe they slept through web 2.0 and keep on snoozing. Seth Godin's been doing various funky things with his books, such as fundraisers. Try a webinar with Amazon or something of that sort. I would love to interact with you, but I'd rather not go to a bookstore for that, because I don't love them anymore. A webinar where I could ask you book questions, though, would be nice." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"Socratic or Critical Thinking games - please help me find them! I am looking for games and simulations devoted to the Socratic method of learning, as well as more general critical thinking. Though any complex game develops critical thinking, for my current purposes, I need either studies focusing on that area within larger virtual worlds, or serious games specifically developed for the purpose. Any advice will be appreciated." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

""It is without a doubt the only hope for students of this new millennium" - how can one ever hope to substantiate a claim of that sort? I will definitely be checking out that method, but I expect that there is more than one hope for students." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"Thank you for your kind words, Lynne and Sandeep. My list of innovative practices is a summary of about fifteen years of participant observations in educational communities. The ironic thing is that most of these communities are barely visible to education researchers. At least there are precious few peer-reviewed publications on them, for multiple reasons: practitioners in the communities are too busy building their educational utopias; many of them don't want to invite the attention of the authorities; and much of this activity happens among friends and families and is, therefore, simply private. For example, the vast majority of homeschool communities are in the "deep web" not accessible to open searches and not visible to non-members. But mostly, all this is just too innovative for mainstream educators - they can't even start integrating any of these practices into their daily life and therefore, research." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"Consider how the cover is going to be displayed. If your client's book is destined for Amazon and similar online venues, the title and author should be readable even in a small thumbnail on a web page. If it's a blockbuster for the front window at Barnes & Noble, then you can have something dramatic on the cover that might in fact not be clearly readable at thumbnail size but that gains its own recognition. If it's going to be on a shelf in the back of the store, the spine is critically important. And if the primary sales channel is a table at the back of the room when your client speaks, the most important feature may be your client's face." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I know I am a month late with this, but BIG CONGRATULATIONS on your success! Apprenticeship models of education, where students are involved in real work, are extremely valuable. You will probably get more excited feedback from educators than from publishers. Thank you for doing this!!! "yes, that’s a publishing enterprise involving undergrads in every phase of the publishing enterprise—is celebrating its fifth title, coming out this weekend. Check it out at www.champlaincollegepublishing.com"" - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I don't know if this graph is "important" in the sense you mean, but it's really neat and interesting to many people. It's called The Uncanny Valley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... Also, there are some neat learning curve graphs comparing game learning curves and applications learning curves. You can find them in this presentation: http://lostgarden.com/2008... Check out Indexed Blog for many hilarious graph ideas: http://thisisindexed.com/" - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"Here are the changes I see implemented right now in the most innovative learning communities, such as homeschoolers or OER communities. I expect many of these changes to become (more) mainstream in 15 years. - Rapid prototyping of everything, short cycles of evaluation and change, correspondingly, short educational experiences. Move from "package deal" to handpicking books, teachers, methods for each child for each 2-4 months of each subject. - Focus on dreams: personal meaning and significance for each learner, rather than one-size-fits-all, or even "personalized" but still global curricula. "Math for poets" does not even begin to cover it! - High value placed on engagement, love for subjects and personal relevance of activities both for activity leaders and for all participants. It is expected that participants and especially leaders of activities care. - Deconstruction of "age" and shift to ability levels and styles. You frequently see age spreads of 3-6 years within each group... more... - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I am working on an ethnographic study of American homeschoolers. I found that families are much more likely to take "dream-centric" approach in educating their children than any institution ever could. Thank you very much for your reference - it will help me in my work!" - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I think personal experiences tend to be situated, context-specific and, as Michael Friedberg pointed out, hard to discuss. Academic math is the opposite: it's context-free, generalized, and depends on a highly formalized and universal language of its own. How do we help our students bridge the two? I found metaphor studies to be quite useful. Personal experiences deal with sources of metaphors, and formal mathematics is the target of metaphors. Different sources may have common targets, for example, speed of growth or daily allowance for "rate." A group of students, together, or one student over time can create a rich example space with many sources for the same concepts. Then they start to see similarities over differences and learn to apply that concept to novel situated images." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"Different people focus on different aspects of the game as large as WoW. I believe your experiences are valid - within the set of playing activities you experience yourself. Please don't over-generalize it to everybody, though. PvE and RP servers (or players) won't be affected as much, because world PvP has never been a big part of their gaming. Guilds raiding progression content will still raid together, because it takes consistent grouping - and their realm-specific social networks will stay within realms because of it. Arena teams, as well, are realm-based. Wintergrasp is a rather popular, successful way to make outdoors PvP meaningful and concentrated in time and space, and it won't get any worse. The only minus I see for my style of playing is the inability to form Friends list cross-realm and to chat with friends from other realms. I usually add to my Friends list from groups I pick up. I hope Blizzard implements these options soon. They already made a step toward it with cross-realm Ignore list." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"The wheel-engine connection structure won’t work; the wheels won’t turn. Proportions of all characters are wrong, but it is a cartoon convention, so I would not consider it a mistake as such. Parts of the elephant that should have been visible between train’s wheels and over the engine are not there. This is more of a “Photoshop Disaster” (TM) than an engineering problem. The seat belt of the smallest character is the longest. Let’s hope the train does not crash or anything, because that restraint system is full of fail. IF the train is supposed to be moving, the air balloon should be blown backward. Maybe the train isn’t moving at the moment, though – well, it can’t, given the wheel mechanism – and there is no wind." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I went to look at population number figures, because absolute numbers are just half of the story. Found a neat site, too - it tells you future news by year. Cute! http://www.newsoffuture.com/year_20... It also uses population projection of 378 million for that year, which makes for 11.7% diabetics according to the article you supplied. The current population is 308 million, with 7.6% diabetic. That means that the relative growth of the diabetes (its incidence), if corrected for the population growth, is projected roughly by the factor of 1.5 or 50% more. I love your "holistic math exercises" as usual, Laura! An a personal anecdote about diabetes. My blood sugar was borderline high during pregnancy, so the doctor wanted to run some tests. The first test was a "sugar stress" - I was supposed to drink some syrup, with artificial coloring and flavor yet, after fasting for a while. Being on a low-carb diet, and that being more sugar than I had in a long while, I reacted rather violently... more... - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I started blogging in 2002 and quit in 2005. It was in Russian blogosphere, mostly on early childhood development. And yes, there was one person who not only showed a group of forum mates what blogs are, but also created accounts for them on a then-invitational platform, and subscribed accounts to one another to get people started. So your generation observation holds. Russian blogs and networks are significantly different from English ones in many ways, and back then the differences were even more stark. If I ever get back to blogging, it will be with videos (vlogs). Meanwhile, I mostly use wikis and nings for group projects. Blog structure feels too confining for what I want to do with people lately." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I think of “What Can You Do With This” as a framework for educators or probably education researchers. It’s been helpful to me personally. For example, the other day I saw my math club members’ cars in the drive up the hill, but they would not enter. I found the lot of them outside, extremely happy in a big PILE OF LEAVES. I asked myself, “WCYDWT?” and sat in the pile for a while, thinking it over. Then we devoted the whole club to “counting all the leaves in the pile” – well, estimating, really. Kids got to 100, 000 very meaningfully, and worked through a couple of important snags in the process, like counting “Ten thousand, two thousand, three thousand…” (the typical place value mistake). It was a very good math experience for six year olds, as evaluated by kids, parents, and myself. I largely blame WCYDWT for this success. I could probably write up a journal article about it, with formal references to relevant research frameworks. However, it’s your baby, so maybe you should do that." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"I think fungus and bacteria can't eat McDonald's burgers because of preservatives in them. Preservatives do not have direct effects of that sort on higher-order organisms. However, we are ecosystems supporting many lower creatures, with about 10% of human dry mass consisting of them. Eating stuff that kills, or does not feed, our cohabiting lower organisms may not be such a hot idea, even if it does not immediately influence our (other) cells. I was thinking of ways to explain it quickly, though, and I draw a blank. The amount of science and logic is beyond a casual conversation. Maybe a catchy symbol/sign and a web page, together with a leaflet/sticker/graffiti/sidebar campaign behind it, would do the trick. My kingdom for a graphic designer!" - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

What a cool example, Steven. Thank you for sharing! I am going to quote it in my math clubs. - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet

"Please check my math... Broth contains maybe 2-3% of gelatin solids by weight, I guess? So, you get about .6% glycine in broth, by by weight. You need to drink about 170g of broth to get 1g of glycine. In comparison, meat has about 2% of glycine by weight. So, it takes 50g of meat to get 1g of glycine. It's pretty neat and makes a lot of sense, considering that broth is made out of throw-away products like bones. I wonder, also, if broth promotes glycine adsorption better. Meat takes energy to digest." - Maria Droujkova from Bookmarklet