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The anonymity of the Internet allows students with special needs to be judged by their work alone, without regard to their disabilities.
by Annie Fetter, The Math Forum @ Drexel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I wish you could have seen David's face when I showed the class his published solution to the last Geometry Problem of the Week. David is labeled as
"odd"
by his peers and isn't one of my best math students. Yet, he gained a lot of face last week when you published his solution.
----Rochelle Ferran, Taipei American School
Natalie is thrilled to be highlighted. She is a terrific student--overcoming severe physical disability in the process.
----Bill Marthinsen, Piedmont High School
While these students are very different, they both have one thing in common--they have special needs, needs that are often difficult to meet in a traditional classroom setting. The Math Forum's Problems of the Week (PoWs), available at mathforum.org/pow/, provide a unique opportunity for students to develop their problem solving and mathematical communication skills and to be mentored by an individual removed from their usual educational setting. Students have a personal relationship with a mathematician who judges them by their work alone, not by who they appear to be.
Teachers (and students) use the PoWs as a source of rich, nonroutine problems. Some teachers have their students submit answers as practice for state tests, which increasingly include open-ended response questions.
The names of PoWs are focused on subject area and not on age level. This allows teachers to use lower-level problems, such as Math Fundamentals PoW, to meet the needs of all students in their classroom.
PoWs offer an opportunity that many students have never had--being judged by their work alone. When I read student submissions, I know nothing about those students other than their name, age, and school. Students can list the name of their current math class, but that's optional. I don't know whether they're considered good students, speak English as a first or second language, or have a disability. I know nothing of their skin color, socioeconomic status, home life, or friends.
PoWs are an example of the truth of the cartoon published in the July 5, 1993, issue of the New Yorker in which one dog (sitting in front of a computer) says to another dog:
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
When I am working on PoWs, I only know what I read in the students' submissions.
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| Illustration by Brian Deep. |
For David and Natalie, the two students mentioned in the beginning of the article, having their solutions included on our site gave them status as student mathematicians, and that helped their peers to see them in a new light.
Because the product that I see from students is sent electronically, I don't have any idea how easy or hard it is for them to type their solution in or how long they spent working on a particular submission.
The distance-learning nature of the PoW can be an advantage not only for students but for mentors as well. One of the Math Forum's mentors, a retired math teacher, uses a wheelchair and no longer works in a traditional classroom. While typing is slow and difficult for him, armed with his computer and his Internet connection, he can still help students and continue to foster a love of mathematics in everyone he mentors.
Sometimes, adults submit answers to the PoWs. While many of these adults are simply people who love doing math and can't get enough of it, others are preparing for their GED or going back to school.
PoWs also give teachers the chance to explore mathematics that they're not familiar with or don't remember. Teachers often use the PoW archives, which has mentors' comments describing different solution paths and common errors that students made as well as a selection of student solutions. Again, the online environment supports the teachers' learning without judging them. Teachers and other adults feel safer in the distance and anonymity of PoW, just as students with special needs do.
Annie Fetter is the Problem of the Week supervisor. She also assists teachers and districts in integrating the use of the Internet into classrooms and teachers' professional lives. Email:
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Steiner, Peter. (1993, July 5). On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog (cartoon). The New Yorker, 69(20), 61.
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