Professional Growth … Connected or Isolated?

Over on the MATHEDCC discussion list, we have been having some difficulties … which essentially are “people declaring a strong point of view, often with negative comments towards others point of view”.

In case you do not know the history of MATHEDCC, here are the basics: A committee in AMATYC (called “Technology in Math Education”, or TiME) created an email discussion list to facilitate conversations among AMATYC members. The actual list was hosted at various servers, and is currently at the Math Forum. However, late last year, the AMATYC Executive Board decided to discontinue the official connection between MATHEDCC and AMATYC.

I will not use this post to elaborate on the difficulties seen on the MATHEDCC list. The purpose of that list, and of this blog, is professional development. I wonder — can our profession make progress for the sake of our students in the absence of a community for our interaction? Or, stated another way, does it make any sense for us to work more-or-less individually on improving our teaching and our curriculum?

For me, there is no doubt about the answers to these questions. If we focus on individual and disconnected progress, the results will be smaller and be at higher risk of not surviving, compared to work by connected professionals. Shared insights and progress create a change in the profession that is not possible when we are not connected.

Clearly, a discussion list is not the only way for us to be ‘connected’ in a meaningful way; we need to employ a variety of methods to work together (including conferences & blogs). And, having a discussion list is no guarantee that we will remain connected. At MATHEDCC, the sense of community is suffering because we do not adhere to a few basic & shared values about our interactions. Perhaps the email list is not the best asynchronous communication tool at this time; maybe a bulletin board would be better (and there are other methodologies as well).

What do you think? If you agree that our work needs to be connected among the professionals in our field, do we need a new place to do that (discussion list, bulletin board, etc)? Are you motivated to help with this work?

Those were serious questions … please provide your answers. Thanks.

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Professional Development | Jack Rotman | January 28, 2012 4:11 pm

3 Comments

By Brenda Shepard, January 28, 2012 @ 4:40 pm

We definitely need to be connected. There is so much work to be done in developmental math and we can surely benefit from the progress that others are making. A bulletin board seems better than the discussion list but maybe there are new technologies that would be even better than a bulletin board. It would be nice if we could see pictures and maybe even profiles so that we would know the background of others sharing their opinions.
By Laura, January 31, 2012 @ 9:14 pm

I agree with Brenda but am not sure of the venue. I don’t know how you keep people who want to rant from ruining it.
By Jack Rotman, February 1, 2012 @ 3:30 pm

Thanks … two possible ways to limit the damage by ‘ranters’ are (1) email list with every post approved by a moderator, and (2) a discussion board with moderators who respond to problem behavior. There might be other methods. Of the two I list, I favor the discussion board venue — however, that requires a few people willing to put in a little time each day dealing with issues. [Most days would be uneventful for a given moderator.]
Do we have enough people willing to work as a moderator to do a discussion board? (Discussion boards are sometimes called ‘bulletin board systems’, which reflects their early history on the internet.)

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