September 1, 2006 was the start of an entirely new career for me.
Retiring in 2006 meant it was thirty years since completing my
doctorate (1976) and having lived an incredible career at UCLA
involving the future of technology in education: thinking
about it, teaching about it, designing (and building) a building
for it,
and an opportunity to be invited to conferences around the world
to speak about it. That career was my trip to the
moon! Now I'm on a trip to Mars! Retired, I turned my time and
energy to my first academic
passion: teaching young children mathematics! As a
bonus, I was invited to write a book about how to teach math
problem solving.
My (on-going) life as
a husband, father, grandfather and community member
Interacting with my
five grandkids (and their parents, that is, my son and
daughter), provides wonderful satisfaction and lots of great
memories, be it traveling or talking on the phone, tutoring
math or playing Rummy Tile. This picture is at the Mendenhall
Glacier, Alaska, taken during our family trip in 2018.
Travels with Lois and Jason
catalogs many of the wonderful travel adventures we've shared
together since our 1966 honeymoon camping trip across the
U.S.
The poem The Owl's Answer in many ways
summarizes my views toward life, and learning as the greatest
journey which we can experience.
Year One 1974 Experiences describes
the chaos in my life as a doctoral student, but still rings
true after all these years.
The 2013 Culver
City Education Foundation President's Award for Community Service
(see fourth picture down) was very nice recognition of the
years of volunteer support that Lois and I contributed to
Culver City schools.
In May each year
since 2010 I've served as a judge at the California State
Science Fair.
Our two year COVID
lock down has been extremely hard, but is now (more or less)
behind us. The sliver lining is I am now a "master" chef
making elaborate breakfast and dinners almost daily! It is a
good thing we have a treadmill or we would also need a new
wardrobe.
2009 -
2012 Taught Math4Parents classes to pre-school parents and
elementary school parents.
2012
extended Math Olympiad via Mathlete Clubs to the other four
Culver City elementary school, including professional development sessions for
the teachers
2014
Culver School District adopted Cognitive Guided Instruction
(CGI) and I began my CGI
training
2016 Math
Olympiad for Elementary and Middle Schools (MOEMS) invited
me to do a book teaching problem solving for math coaches.
2018
publication of Teaching
Mathematical Problem Solving Using MOEMS Contest Problems.
Ruth co-authoredthe
book with me.One of the
workshop participants dubbed the book The Big Yellow
Book.
March 12,
2020 The Fourteenth Annual Math Olympiad Tournament
scheduled for March 14 was cancelled due to Covid-19
pandemic.
Summer 2020 faced with reality of
being online next school year, I invited former students and
coaches to experiment with me on how to do math via Zoom; we
evolved a model with middle and high school students
facilitating elementary school students in breakout rooms. I
submitted a video proposal to Culver
City Unified School District for support, and they
enthusiastically embrace our plans..
2020-2021 Zoom Math Olympiad clubs
at five Culver City elementary schools involving about 150
4th and 5th grade students, 10 parent and 30 7th – 12th
grade facilitators. To support the parents and facilitators,
I made many instructional videos
posted on YouTube.
February
and May, 2021 chaired two Zoom based math tournaments for
all CCUSD students who participated in the Zoom club
meetings during the year. Here is our Math Cheer! Feedback
was it was great fine fun!
2021-2022 coordinated Zoom Math
Olympiad clubs at three Culver City elementary schools with
about 60 mathletes, a few parents and a dozen 7th – 12th
grade facilitators. Also provided support to the two schools
that had in-person clubs.
April 2022:Chaired the 15th
Annual Los Angeles Country-wide Excellence in Mathematics
Culver City (E=MC**2) multi-school hybrid-Zoom tournament.Twenty-six teams
from 11 schools participated with teams meeting at their
home school Zooming in for the individual and team events.
Summer 2022: Teaching via Zoom and
making my videos crystallized many of the ideas in the Big
Yellow Book and motivated me to revise and build on
those ideas. My goal is for the new manuscript to accomplish
what was originally conceived by not accomplish. My hope is
to someday see it published!
2022 – 2023Initiated the
in-person Math Clubs at all five CCUSD school including
coach training workshops. While not returning to the
classroom (yet?), I am conducing in person Introduction to
CGI for Parents at two CCUSD elementary schools. I am chairing the 16th
annual tournament scheduled for April 22, 2023 with our full
contingent of 36 teams = 180 mathletes.
Retirement
could not be more fun!!!
My (former)
professional life at UCLA Anderson School
The most amazing aspect
of my life right now (2021), is that it is like the person who
lived my former life was some one other than me. I've
selected the links below as they give a good overall picture of my
time at UCLA.
My most challenging
research was thinking about how we would manage all the
information flooding us in this information age.
Traditionally librarian cataloged and organized files and
documents for us. However, with everyone using a
computer, personal knowledge management is a serious
challenge. It was nice learning in 2017 that my 1998
paper Personal
Knowledge Managment: Who? What? Why?
Where? When? How?is cited on Wikipedia
in the History and Background as the originator of the term!
My primary research
area was tracking the introduction and impact of computer
technology in the university environment, as reflected in Annual UCLA
Survey of Business School Computing Usage conducted
between 1980 and 1999. This research was the motivation for so
many invitations to speak at conferences and schools around
the world.
As an instructor,
my courses where almost always future oriented: I taught
an "office automation" course in the early 1980s, which
reflected the early introduction of word processing on
computers. Also in the early 80's I taught an
introduction to computer technology course in which the
students developed the specifications for the first
microcomputer for the Anderson faculty. The 1999
description for my Managerial
Computing course (using what was then "emerging"
technology) with its focus on the future, has a fun set
of starting questions, many of which are now answered.
An
assignment in my 1996 Managerial
Implications of Emerging Information Technologies
class was to select an emerging technology and write a paper
describing it and the issues.I selected the best papers and posted them on my
website thinking that our students had good ideas worth
sharing.Bill
Palace’s paper on Data Mining
has been a major success from the perspective that it is
still available and listed on the first page of a Google or
a Yahoo search.
Toward the end of
my UCLA career, I conducted several workshops on the Library of the
Future, building on the work we did on integrating the
UCLA Anderson School library and computer organizations.
The decade of the
1990s focused on planning and then implementing AndersoNet, at
the time, the most advanced computing and network environment
in any university. These fun Network Central Photos
show all the spaghetti wiring which the user never saw, but
made it all possible. But, this was just another step in
the history of computing at UCLA. Clay Sprowls
introduced digital technology to the campus in the 1950s and documented
this fascinating centralized computer history with pictures
and testimonials. My mini-
and micro-computer history adds another dimension to the
story. Note: I downloaded Clay's files from the
www.personal.anderson.ucla.edu web server in June, 2017 in an
effort to preserve this history as the server is being
retired. Hopefully all pictures and links were captured.
My professional life
before UCLA
Co-author with Evelyn
Boyd Granville: Theory and Applications of
Mathematics for Teachers, Wadsworth Publishing Company,
First Edition 1975 and Second Edition 1978.
Welcome
to Jason Frand's
Homepage
One of the
workshop participants dubbed the book The Big Yellow
Book.