David Moursund
Biography:
David Moursund has a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He taught mathematics at Michigan State University and University of Oregon. He served six years as the first Head of the Computer Science Department at the University of Oregon and was a professor in the UO's College of Education for more than 20 years.
His professional career includes founding the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) in 1979, serving as ISTE's executive officer for 19 years, and establishing ISTE's flagship publication, Learning and Leading with Technology. He was the major professor or co-major professor for 82 doctoral students - six in Mathematics and 76 in Computers in Education. He has authored or coauthored more than 60 academic books and hundreds of articles.
In 2007, Moursund founded the non-profit Information Age Education (IAE). IAE provides free online educational materials via its IAE-pedia, IAE Newsletter, IAE Blog, and books.
Presentation Title:
Mathematics Education is at a Major Turning Point
Presentation Description:
A likely future of the discipline of mathematics is easy to forecast. As it has over many thousands of years, mathematics will continue to grow in breadth and depth.
The future of PreK-12 math education is not so easy to forecast. We are at a cusp. We must reconcile the past with the steadily growing capabilities of information and communication technology and a rapidly growing understanding of cognitive neuroscience. This future includes continuing remarkable progress in genetic engineering, cognition-enhancing drugs, robotics, and human/machine interfaces.
Our traditional math education system is designed to help students gain prescribed levels of math understanding and math maturity. A future-looking math education system must thoroughly integrate components of our current system with the changes described above. In this future math education system, human brains and computer brains will routinely learn and work together to understand, represent, and solve pure, applied, and computational math problems.