Blogs on Math

This blog post is an excerpt from Save Our Science: How To Inspire a New Generation of Scientists by Ainissa Ramirez (TED Books).

The 21st century requires a new kind of learner -- not someone who can simply churn out answers by rote, but a student who can think expansively and solve problems resourcefully. As a scientist and inventor, a longtime professor at Yale University, and a woman who has always been passionate about getting kids excited about science, I believe that the key to this goal is to improve science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. These disciplines are rooted in the kind of thinking that is now critical. One of the most important aspects of this shift is to fix the false presumption that girls are not as good as boys in science and math.

Khan Academy is primarily known as an online portal of videos and exercises (we have delivered over 207 million lessons to date). We believe that online learning goes hand in hand with hands-on, project-based learning -- and that’s why we decided to run a summer camp, the Discovery Lab, to try out the deeper explorations that can be done in a physical space. As we fine-tune the lessons that work in this setting, we will try to integrate them more deeply into the core Khan Academy platform, so students and teachers around the world have the infrastructure and tools to fully explore their creativity.

The last month has seen a plethora of discussions about the necessity for teaching math beyond what most jobs consider necessary. Much of it started from Andrew Hacker's now infamous article on whether math is necessary, to which a bunch of us replied with equal fervor (Dan Willingham's and Sherman Dorn's pieces are great rejoinders). What we all seem to agree on is that, indeed, the way we teach math matters. Lots. Having a positive environment for kids where they feel like they can actually do math without feeling like they're complete failures matters a lot.

A few days ago, I visited a math teacher who was busily preparing his classroom for the start of the school year. This classroom, however, was a bit unusual. Casey Shea, who teaches at Analy High School in Sebastopol, California, was transforming an old wood shop into a "makerspace." With his students’ help, much of the furniture was built from scratch, and the space will soon be filled with students working on projects that might range from solar-powered battery chargers to geodesic domes and a pedal-powered blender.