RESEARCH General Education

MATH EDUCATION
Summer class goes high-tech to inspire struggling students

Craig Chamberlain, Education Editor
(217) 333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu

6/1/02

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Getting into this special summer math class was easy: All students had to do was fail the entry exam.

Those are precisely the Illinois high school students the creators of the university-developed class intended to target and engage with a program that emphasizes hands-on, real-world, high-tech math.

The organizers of SummerMath 2002 are certain many of the students will discover a new interest and confidence in subjects such as algebra, geometry and statistics. They'll be interacting with computers; designing Web sites; building and testing model bridges; making digital movies; and using global positioning systems on a scavenger hunt - and in the process learning the math that makes it all work.

It all grows out of a belief that everyone can, and should, learn math -- a belief that drives the activities of the Office of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (MSTE), in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Among its other projects is a collection of materials for Illinois' middle-school math teachers, and a Web site for teachers that each month gets 100,000 visits and supplies more than 2 million downloads of math-related lessons and software.

MSTE designed the SummerMath program and ran it as a pilot last summer at the Technology Center of DuPage, a career-oriented high school serving DuPage County. This summer they're running it at several additional sites, including Addison, Chicago Heights and Champaign, and involving about 100 total students. The program also will include training for teachers who want to use the program's resources or techniques in their classrooms, or to start SummerMath programs next summer.

"Mathematics is very engaging, it's very creative, it's very important -- and yet, for whatever reasons, kids are being turned off by mathematics right and left," says Kenneth Travers, the founder and director of MSTE. Starting with the freshman year in high school, about half of students each year drop out of math, denying them skills they need in life and in potential careers, Travers said.

"Mathematics is a filter; it ought to be a pump," Travers said, quoting a national report on the state of U.S. math education. "It ought to be a subject that empowers kids, that helps them realize their goals, whatever they are," he said.

MSTE is making that point by developing materials and programs over the past five years at the Technology Center of DuPage, where math is incorporated in a way that has shop teachers talking trigonometry. The university's mathematics department also has played a part by developing courses.

Technology plays a key role in MSTE's efforts, because it fundamentally changes the way math is taught, said George Reese, the unit's associate director, and Claran Einfeldt, the director of outreach. It makes ideas dynamic, rather than static and stuck in a textbook. It also gives students ownership by allowing them to explore, they noted. And it provides opportunities to explore math concepts, even as basic skills are being mastered. (MSTE can be found on the Web at www.mste.uiuc.edu.)