John Dewey wonders about calculators, too

John Dewey, the anonymous ed-school student who's been submitting funny and thought-provoking updates on his experience to Edspresso.com, drops another entry into the edusphere with his latest posting: "Glasnost, Perestroika, and Graphing Calculators."

Our pseudo-Dewey, who's working towards his certification to be a math teacher, reports this month about ways educators may not be so far apart on some of the "math wars" battle grounds. But he also notes that there's still a great gulf between instructional philosophies when it comes to teaching math. (This is probably the reason that the National Council of Teachers of Math -- a.k.a. the NCTM -- and its recently-released "Focal Points" document still receive so much contentious coverage in the media and edusphere.)

And if you found the calculator cartoon funny (or not....), check out Dewey's description of his class' debate on using calculators as part of math instruction. As he points out, we "...are a long way from perestroika." Good stuff.