CUNY

MATHEMATICS
CONFERENCE
MATH 633

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Extra Credit Paper CUNY 2014 Mathematics Conference: Effective Instructional

Strategies
Keynote Address: Globalizing our Classrooms, Deborah J. Hughes Hallett Lecturer
This lecture focused on how we, as Math teachers could successfully utilize the
internet in our classrooms and Mathematical courses.

The basic premise of the

lecturer is that we should try to add sense and meaning to what we teach, and that
the Internet is a good way to link mathematics into real world occurrences, thus
increasing awareness and interest of our students in Mathematics.
Several points were made by the lecturer:
1. Images can help students to understand a concept or topic. Images can be
manipulated, rotated, so students can see them from different angles. This
can help students to understand different concepts.
2. Mathematics can be related to a students everyday life. The lessons can
refer to time-related data, such as the changing stock market, the annual
rainfall of a region, the unemployment rate, or even the migration of whales.
3. The lesson can be made to require real time data collection, and analyzing
data or building databases. Students can conduct research using large and
geographically varied samples. They learn to analyze trends, correlations,
and causality. With real-time data so readily accessible today, students have
the ability to see the relationship between their studies and the real world.
Her belief is that by incorporating globalization and use of the internet into
the classroom, we have a great tool to solve daily problems. Mathematics can
incorporate and support student cooperation and collaboration. It can further
facilitate student learning in problem solving, math research, and many virtual
hands-on activities.

The Professor looked at several online topics and then opened up the topics
discussion. We looked at surveys to see how many people thought we should
invade Ukraine. We looked at charts comparing the relative sizes of each state in
the US to a foreign country. We looked at statistical charts analyzing which
countries had the most domain names, the distribution of police officers per
capita of 100,000 population across countries, and education trends in India
based on classes and economic background. We looked at how logarithms
factored into airport noise pollution.
The internet basically expands the resources available to a teacher. It
decreases the time and location dependencies that can be limiting factors in
schools. It offers powerful and varied ways for students and teachers to interact;
manipulate data and conduct research.
We are living in an era with substantial budget cuts across many schools. City
University of New York and in particular, Hunter College is no exception to this.
Non-Internet resources including libraries, video, film strips, and CDs have
become increasingly scarce. There are many documents, artifacts, and books
that students in many schools will never be able to access. In addition, teachers
and students in many schools are working with outdated textbooks and
materials.

The internet and global approach to Math education expands the

resources available to teachers and students. It also decreases time and location
dependencies that can be limiting factors in schools.
The Internet eliminates the need to be in the same place and the same time
as the person or resource you are interacting with. Although, there are technical
requirements including having a computer with an Internet connection, but the

world is at your door. This is not to say that the interaction and dynamic of a
classroom are going away, rather they are growing. Away from schools, students
can ask questions by sending e-mails to friends, teachers or counter experts,
they can research materials at various web sites and they can submit their
homework for review from anywhere at any time.
In summary, she indicated we need to show what math can do. We need to
teach math in ways that might not be obviously relevant to the student. She
invited Math teachers to choose examples with purpose, and where the context
is important in its own right. She admitted that this would be easier in some
Math courses than others.