Max Ray and I communicated 3 years ago after I was in Philadelphia for a conference. We never actually met while I was there. Since then, he has published a book on problem solving. I’ll confess I bought it, but haven’t read it yet.
We were both at Twitter Math Camp last week. Early on the first morning, I nervously introduced myself to him and said hello. I didn’t want to take up too much of his time, since he was getting ready for his morning session. I intended to go to his problem solving session later on in the camp, but chose differently in that time slot only because there was another one I though might be slightly more relevant to my work next year. Because of that, I didn’t get to interact with him again, which I was regretting.
Then, Max ended up sitting beside me during Eli Luberoff’s keynote and Desmos demonstration. Desmos is more than just an awesome and free online graphing calculator. Eli was having us work through the Desmos Function Carnival activity, which is part of their set of classroom activities that are “Hand-crafted classroom activities. Designed by teachers. Built with love by Desmos.”
I had my laptop open, so Max slid over and we worked together. I’m the type of kid who needs to get everything right, so I was trying my hardest to get stuff done well.
Max said, “Get the next one wrong.” After I got over my initial shock, I remembered where I was and what we were doing. We were evaluating an online classroom activity. In order for an online classroom activity to be useful to students, it has to be built to provide them with useful feedback when they are wrong. I saw what Max was doing and why he wanted to be wrong. We got a few wrong, and we got feedback that would be useful to students. Thanks, Max, for that brief interaction, and for reminding me what I should have been doing in that moment. It made me think I should have gone to his problem solving session.
For the record, the Desmos function carnival appears to be a remarkably well-built activity. Check out David Cox’s video showing what the teacher can see over time as a class works on it. I intend to spend some time this summer working through some others.
What a great problem solving strategy….”get the next one wrong.” I, myself, was just like you John and was doing the same thing.
In this case we weren’t problem solving for the activity in and of itself, but instead for the sake of our students. I’ll remember this next time.
Thanks for mentioning this great resource! I’ll be using this at the start of my Calculus class this year!