Week 15 blog posting

I read the Barody and Bartel article. I picked this one because I thought that the idea of connections was interesting and something worth discussing. The author makes a very clear argument in the first section of the article. He states that "Research suggests that understanding can be viewed as a connection between two pieces of information (Ginsburg 1977), and an understanding of elementary concepts is essential for mathematical power, for example, applying school mathematics to everyday tasks, inventing mathematical procedures, understanding and solving genuine problems, and comprehending more advanced mathematical ideas." This sentence totally convinced me of his idea and drew me to want to read more. The author then goes on to talk about the use of concept maps to achieve this goal. While this was something that I had never thought of before, the author makes sense. That using this model allows students to draw their own connections on the concepts of math. This will also give information to the teacher about what connections the students are making versus those that we want them to make. As well as showing students how everything that they learn builds upon itself and is all interconnected. I believe that this is an interesting way to show students a new technique and grasp their knowledge.