442 Reflection

Hello twins.

The following is a reflection on my experiences during EDCP 442.

This course really opened my eyes to two major themes. One is how fascinating it can be to explore the often-overlooked history of the major ideas present in modern mathematics. I had not explored this really at all during my time as a student or teacher. I can see the value in enriching one's understanding and providing a greater appreciation that it can provide. I would like to implement more history into my lessons by picking spots to integrate them into certain topics. I really enjoyed it when we explored ancient methods as well and got to practice solving problems using algorithms or techniques that they would have used around that time. It was fascinating to explore the ingenuity of ancient civilizations and to see authentic demonstrations of their calculations during that time. I believe students can definitely benefit from seeing these demos. The other major takeaway was how much math has been influenced by other cultures. Math textbooks and resources tend to mostly focus on Western contributions and white male figures. I enjoyed reading how these mathematical ideas were discovered at different times across the world and how cultures had their own unique ways of looking at a problem. During our class presentations, it was clear that this idea had been received by all the students in the class. We often focused on incorporating the contributions of multiple cultures on our math topic and recognizing how ideas stemmed from a variety of figures. 

Thanks for reading,

Josh