Mr. David Wees posted a blog post entitled: Math in the Real World: Gardening. In his post, he describes a problem that his aunt and uncle are having; They want to build a garden bed with a special size and shape. When their garden bed is done, they want it to be 3 feet on 3 sides and 4 feet on one side with a trapezoid shape. His uncle just needs to know the angle for each side of the trapezoid, so the he can cut the wood with his miter saw. Mr. Wees decides that this problem will need to be solved using more that one method and uses Wolfram Alpha, a graphing calculator, Geogebra, and the Law of Cosines. After using of of theses methods, he is pretty sure of his solution, but he asks the question: "Which of these techniques would you classify as "mathematics"?"
During the week of March 19th to March 25th, I left a comment for Mr. Wees on this blog post. I wrote the following comment:
Dear Mr. Wees,
I am leaving you a comment as part of an assignment for Dr. Strange's EDM310 class at the University of South Alabama.
Firstly, I really enjoyed reading your blog post.
You ask if it matters how you solve the problem: I think that real-life mathematics problems should be solved by using whatever tools are available, so long as you are able to carefully check over your work. It should then go without saying that regardless of the method/technique used, I would classify it as mathematics. I noticed that you used quite a few techniques to check you work. Do you think that it's important to use more than one technique, when finding the solution to a mathematical problem?
Best,
Eleanor Pomerat
On March 30th, David Wees posted a blog post entitled, Another alternative to the traditional conference. He wrote of a new and interesting idea that would revolutionize the traditional conference model. The traditional model has each conference member making it to the conference and attempting to make connections with people, while there. This new model would have a system of email set up with each conference member in a "cohort" way before the conference. Hopefully, this new model will/would allow for members to make contacts before they every reach the conference and then, once at the conference, they will/would be placed into the same sort of groups for their sessions. This way allows each person to make contacts way in advance of a conference and to simply continue the communication, once there.
During the week of March 26th to April 1st, I left a comment for Mr. Wees on this blog post. Here is my comment:
Mr Wees,
My name is Eleanor Pomerat. I am a student in Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class at the University of South Alabama. I will post a summary of of the comments that I have left for you to my blog before 4/2.
I was very interested to read your thoughts on changing the way conferences work. I've heard of using twitter during a session; someone asking for responses by tweet and such, but that's a very limited use of technology and doesn't really bring people together with a sense of community, as conferences are really meant to. I agree that email is the best option currently available that is widely used and accepted by all ages. With that said, I think that email will become a sort of dinosaur for the next generation, who are currently shying away from it. I say this as a member of this younger generation. I don't have a perfect solution, but I think the perfect kind of new technology would mesh the community side of Facebook with the professional side of email. This new interface would need to be carefully set up to allow for archiving, but also for interactive activities within a session. Do you know of something that is currently available that is a cross between facebook, email, and a forum? I think that would be the very best option.
I really enjoyed reading your post and hope that this kind of conference come to fruition; it's a wonderful idea.
Best,
Eleanor Pomerat
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