From UCI
What good is a penguin named Jiji walking a plank pierced by segments of differing lengths? Plenty, according an educator and math expert in Irvine. He employs that black-and-white animated character to get kids to see and learn math in a new way -- without depending so heavily on words, numbers and calculations. He hopes to get them to see and understand the math first, then to add in the abstract symbols. This visual form of instruction, embodied now in easy to use and to distribute computer programs, will be tested in 50 schools in Orange County to better understand how "spatial temporal reasoning" or the visualization of math concepts may be affected by kids' gender, special needs, English language abilities and limits on their capacity with spatial skills. The new method has shown promising results, boosting youngsters' math scores by 10 to 15 points on standardized exams; it has been used with more than 100,000 kids, 4,500 teachers and at 500 schools already.
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