A Foot in the Mechanical and A Foot in the Digital

Today is the birthday of Johann Faulhaber born in Ulm, Germany, 1580.  He was an algebraist and is known for his work in explaining logarithms.

Logarithms brings back memories of using slide rules.  I am no longer proficient in their use but my high school mathematics experience was one void of calculators.  I did buy a calculator for college.  It was an HP that I plugged into an outlet nightly.  I struggle at times with the digital world.  I do not game for my enjoyment.  I read and watch television.  My son, Sam, believes I struggle between the transition from analog to digital.  "Your feet", he quips to me in a recent excursion to Minneapolis, "are firmly planted in both worlds."

I recently attended the MCTM conference in Duluth and went to a presentation by a middle school teacher who constructed a class management system based on gamification . . . earning points, moving up to levels, and gaining rewards.  "Are these rewards extrinsic?", he concluded, "Yes but what are grades?"  He is a teacher that has grownup in the digital.  He games.  I do not, have not, and probably will not.   I play pinball, real pinball, not virtual pinball.

A discussion in at a recent 6-12 district math teachers focused on the use of graphics calculators as aps on cell phones.  Alarming to me - I'm still trying to understand my "dumb" phone and my Casio Prism calculator.

What does this mean for my students?  I am creating digital media clips of instruction on various standard based units sans Khan Academy . . . not a truly flipped classroom - a hybrid of sorts.  A mathematics teacher at Tech high school does nothing digital and has a great deal of success.  Sam, I do have a foot firmly planted in the past but only a toe testing the waters of the future :-)