Taking Inventory, PreK-3: The Role of Context »

Maarten Dolk is a researcher and developer of mathematics education at the Freudenthal Institute in the Netherlands, where he has been involved in the development of professional materials for teachers and for student teachers. He also has directed an inservice project in the Netherlands for teacher educators and staff developers. His work in the United States is related to the inservice of primary school teachers. He is the coauthor of the Young Mathematicians at Work series.

Catherine Twomey Fosnot is Professor of Education at The City College of the City of New York and Director of Mathematics in the City. She twice has won the "best writing" award from AERA's Constructivist SIG and she was the recipient of the "young scholar" award by Educational Communication and Technology Journal. She is an author of several books on mathematics education, most recently, the Young Mathematicians at Work series.

In their Young Mathematicians at Work series, Catherine Twomey Fosnot and Maarten Dolk described Mathematics in the City, an innovative project where teachers helped young children construct a deep understanding of number and operations in a math workshop environment. Now they and two colleagues from the project have developed a 21st-century approach that provides pre- and inservice teachers with an interactive, video-based, digital context for inquiry into the teaching and learning of mathematics.

Designed for workshop participants and preservice teachers, the Taking Inventory CD-ROM offers users a multi-media learning environment for professional development on topics ranging from instruction to assessment, that stimulates action, reflection, and discussion with dynamic video clips, children's work samples, and interviews with students and teachers.

In Taking Inventory, K-1 students inventory materials in their classroom, along the way, developing number sense, counting strategies, and the big ideas underpinning place value. The CD-ROM helps teachers examine children's numeric thinking; investigate their strategies; and analyze how they model their world mathematically.

Users also study teachers at work: designing rich contexts for problem-solving; drawing connections between mathematical ideas and strategies; and developing a vibrant mathematical community.

System Requirements for CD-ROM

Windows/PC
Pentium II Processor
266Mhz (or higher)
Windows 98 (or higher)
64 MB RAM (more recommended)
SVGA Color Display (or better)
4X CD-ROM Drive (or faster)
Sound Card
16-bit Flash(TM) Player and Acrobat Reader(R)
Quicktime 6.0 (or higher)

MacIntosh
PowerPC Processor G3/233Mhz (or higher)
System 9.2 (or higher)
64 MB RAM (more recommended)
SVGA Color Display (or better)
4X CD-ROM Drive (or faster)
Sound Card
16-bit Flash(TM) Player and Acrobat Reader(R)
Quicktime 6.0 (or higher)