Free eBooks by Dave Moursund

I strongly believe that our education system can be a lot better than it currently is. Indeed, I predict that during the next two decades, we will substantially improve our educational system. In this book, I enlist the reader\'s help in making this prediction come true.

The focus in this MS Word format eBook is on two aspects of improving our educational system:

1. Improving the quality of education that K-12 students are receiving.
2. Improving the professional lives of teachers and other educators.

The School Administrator’s book was the first book published by the International Council for Computers in Education The original book was published in 1980 and was 48 pages in length.
The version reprinted here is the “Fourth Printing with Revisions, April 1983.” This revision was 64 pages in length. During those early years, ICCE made use of a press at the University of Oregon that printed 16 page “signatures.” That is, for the 5 1/2 inch by 8 1/2 inch page size we used for booklets, one could most easily have 16, 32, 48, or 64 pages of length.

The April 1983 revision included the expansion from 48 pages to 64 pages. Part of the expansion was done by including seven editorials from The Computing Teacher. The seventh of these editorials appeared in the April 1983 issue of The Computing Teacher.

This MS Word Format eBook addresses the problem that our K-8 school math education system is not as successful as many people would like it to be, and it is not as successful as it could be. It is designed as supplementary material for use in a Math Methods course for preservice K-8 teachers. However, it can also be used by inservice K-8 teachers and for students enrolled in Math for Elementary and Middle School teachers’ courses.

The book draws upon and explores four Big Ideas that, taken together, have the potential to significantly improve out math education. The Big Ideas are:

1. Thinking of learning math as a process of both learning math content and a process of gaining in math maturity. Our current math education system is does a poor job of building math maturity.
2. Thinking of a student’s math cognitive development in terms of the roles of both nature and nurture. Research in cognitive acceleration in mathematics and other disciplines indicates we can do much better in fostering math cognitive development.
3. Understanding the power of computer systems and computational thinking as an aid to representing and solving math problems and as an aid to effectively using math in all other disciplines.
4. Placing increased emphasis on learning to learn math, making effective use of use computer-based aids to learning, and information retrieval.

This book is designed to help students, teachers, parents, and policymakers make more effective use of computer technology in education. It serves two main functions. First, it provides background information to help schools develop and refine technology plans. Second, it is meant to serve as a communication tool to help educators articulate the reality and potential of technology to parents, policymakers, resource providers, and other stakeholders in the education of our children.

This MS Word format book is for undergraduate and graduate college and university students, and for others thinking about enrolling in higher education courses. The information and ideas presented will help college students to obtain an education that will be useful throughout their lives in our rapidly changing Information Age world.

Change is one of the themes of this book. We are living at a time of a rapid technological change. The rate of change is increasing. Such change brings with it both threats and opportunities. Students can shape their informal and formal education to diminish the threats and increase the opportunities.

Gaining a competitive advantage is one of the underlying themes of the book. Computer technology empowers and enables its users. This means that in any academic area of study, a student can gain a competitive advantage by developing a higher level of “traditional” expertise in the area and by developing an increased level of expertise in using computers in the areas.