Maryland Public Television (MPT), in partnership with the Math Forum at Drexel University and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), is establishing an elementary math pathway as part of the National STEM Education Distributed Learning program (NSDL). The primary target audience for MathPath is elementary classroom teachers and specialists, including coaches and supervisors. Additional audiences include higher educators involved in teacher preparation and parents. The overarching goal of MathPath is: 1) to make high-quality digital mathematics content available to the target audience; and 2) to contextualize the resources so that educators can easily incorporate them into effective math instruction. To accomplish these goals, MPT is: 1) forming and strengthening collaborative relationships; 2) identifying content for inclusion in MathPath; 3) specifying requirements for the MathPath website; 4) developing, testing and refining the MathPath website; 5) developing MathPath professional development resources; 6) launching, promoting, and supporting the MathPath website; and 7) evaluating the implementation and outcomes of the MathPath project. Intellectual Merit: It is well recognized that the elementary grades are critical in building a strong foundation of mathematical knowledge that will lead to students' success in algebra and beyond. At the same time, it has become clear that many teachers who provide this instruction have weak math content knowledge and pedagogy. A well-designed NSDL Pathway can help increase the likelihood that elementary educators have the knowledge and instructional resources they need to teach math effectively and ensure the success of all students, including minority and other at-risk students. Using the capabilities of Web 2.0 provide the means for not only offering content but for involving users in a learning community built around a collection of high-quality resources. MathPath users are taking advantage of an interactive and participatory environment using such tools as blogs, wikis, podcasting, and digital video. Broader Impacts: To address the high level of concern about improving elementary math instruction, there is increasing interest in developing and certifying elementary math specialists. While formal recognition and certification of elementary math specialists is just now emerging, there are many educators who currently have the interest and are responsible for ensuring high-quality mathematics instruction for elementary students. This includes classroom teachers who only teach math, lead or resource teachers who spend most of their time coaching and mentoring classroom teachers, and district elementary math coordinators and supervisors. These are people who are likely to seek out quality resources and to share them with colleagues. MathPath is filling an important position in the NSDL by aggregating high-quality content and providing the information and professional development that elementary educators need to use digital math content effectively. While there are numerous sources of content on the Web, there is no one trusted source for both digital content and opportunities to learn in the area of elementary mathematics education.
(now called Mathlanding) to the National STEM Education Distributed Learning (NSDL) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) took place at the time the National Mathematics Advisory Panel was issuing its Final Report (Foundations for Success) in 2008. The Panel called for the mathematics curriculum in the early grades to be streamlined, to emphasize a well-defined set of the most critical topics in each grade, and to reflect what is clearly known from rigorous research about how children learn. It was in that context Maryland Public Television (MPT) and its partners, the Math Forum at Drexel University and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), proposed to establish a website that would support elementary educators with the knowledge and instructional resources they need to teach math effectively and build a strong foundation of mathematics in students. MPT’s motivation to support elementary educators in raising their level of mathematical expertise and practice became even more urgent in the intervening years when the Common Core State Standards were developed and adopted in the vast majority of states. In this transformative period, educators teach fewer concepts and "go deeper" in the subject. As one educator we interviewed put it, the focus now is on mathematics, not arithmetic. Students are now challenged to be adept at problem solving and mathematical thinking. The media as well as our own research has highlighted a major challenge of Common Core- that teachers were taught to emphasize procedures and now they are being asked to approach math in a different way. In a 2-year long series of case studies with math supervisors, specialists and coaches, the evaluation team documented the intellectual merit and broader impact of the Mathlanding project. As one interview subject described it, the refocusing of mathematics instruction "required a paradigm shift—you go from a skill in isolation to deeper thinking." It was seen by the specialists interviewed as moving away from a workbook and a worksheet for teaching math, to making it engaging and conceptual based. The textbook no longer served as the centerpiece of math instruction in many elementary schools. At the same time, the deficits that were identified by the Math Panel in terms of elementary teachers’ math background were exacerbated by the new emphasis. As one math coach saw it, "Teachers are interested, excited, afraid, and frustrated. It’s a lot of change." Mathlanding has enabled math specialists and the teachers they work with to go deeper and have a deeper understanding—to achieve mastery with the support of vetted resources and tools. The basic difficulty for classroom teachers and their supervisors is that educators cannot efficiently sift through the massive quantity of digital content available online to identify the quality resources that are appropriate for their specific needs. It is here that Mathlanding accomplished its first goal: to make high-quality mathematics content available to the target audience. The identification, vetting, and cataloging process was carried out by a team of five math experts from around the country, using rigorous aggregation rules and a rubric for assessing quality developed for the project. More than 2,000 free resources are now available, representing the highest quality content available on the web for professional practice (lessons, journal articles, best practice videos, blogs and online courses) and student learning (such as interactive activities, virtual manipulatives and apps). To further meet the needs of today’s educators, all content is aligned to both the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the NCTM Content and Process Standards. Further, the digital library features a robust search engine and a simple suite of tools that allow users to save, share and collaborate together. Educators can save resources in folders, share these among members of private or public Mathlanding groups and have meaningful discussions. The second goal of the Mathlanding project was to contextualize the resources so that educators could easily incorporate them into math instruction. The "Collections" are skill and knowledge-building content designed around core themes that provide a set of carefully selected resources, teaching supports, and a discussion area. The Collections found on the Mathlanding site are of two types: Professional Development (PD), which serves the professional learning needs of teachers (and helps school and district specialists meet that need) and complementary Classroom collections for teachers to use with students. Focus groups helped identify the most highly desired math topics for the collections with the outcome being a range of key topics including fractions, fact fluency, math anxiety, algebraic thinking and the eight practice standards. The intellectual merit of the grant has been strengthened by the initial formative evaluations and later beta-testing of the site that assessed these areas of greatest need and led to guiding the purposeful development of the site.
