Welcome to Jason Frand's Homepage

My 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 chatting with WhatsApp, 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. The 2020 Fair was cancelled, and has gone virtual starting in in 2021. The 2023 Fair was my last as a judge.
  
• 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 breakfasts and dinners almost daily! It is a good thing we have a treadmill or we would also need a new wardrobe.

• In September, 2023, I joined the Creative Writing class at the Culver City Senior Center. My best essays can be found here.
  

• The creative writing instructor is also a professor at OTIS College of Art and Design where she offers a required course called True Stories. A team of art students interviews someone and then do an art project based on the person’s life. I was asked to be a subject, and the student project was presented May 4, 2024. The final exam is a presentation which you can watch here and the creation of a wonderful book which you can download and read here.

   

• 2006 started volunteer teaching mainstream students math enrichment classes focusing on teaching problem solving using multi-step word problems at Lin Howe Elementary School, Culver City, California.
  
• 2007 UCLA colleague Ruth Sabean retired and tean team taught with me until 2018.

• 2008 organized and chaired the first Culver City math tournament, now called the E=MC² Excellence in Mathematics Culver City Tournament. The 17th annual Tournament will be held April 13, 2024, with 180 Mathletes on 36 teams participating from over from 30 Los Angeles Countywide elementary schools.

• Initiated exploration of Singapore Math with teachers as an alternative to the existing curriculum with Lin Howe teachers.
  
• 2009 - 2012 taught Math4Parents classes to pre-school parents and elementary school parents.
  
• 2012 extended Mathlete Clubs to the other four Culver City elementary schools, which included professional development sessions for the teachers.
  
• 2014 Culver City Unified School District (CCUSD) adopted Cognitive Guided Instruction (CGI) and I began my CGI training.  
  
• 2015 taught a parent class to introduce CGI.   
  
• 2015 – 2017 conducted workshops for teachers and math coaches.  
  
• 2016 Math Olympiad for Elementary and Middle Schools organization invited me to do a book teaching problem solving for math coaches.   
  
• 2018 publication of Teaching Mathematical Problem Solving Using MOEMS Contest Problems. One of the workshop participants nicknamed the book, The Big Yellow Book.
• March 12, 2020 The Fourteenth Annual Los Angeles Countrywide E=MC² Tournament scheduled for March 14th was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Summer 2020 faced with the reality of online school year, with the help of former students and coaches. we developed a model using middle and high school students as facilitators for math enrichment for the elementary students in breakout rooms on Zoom. The model is explained in this video.
  

• 2020-2021 created and coordinated Zoom Math Clubs at all five CCUSD elementary schools involving about 150 4th and 5th grade students, 10 parent coaches and 30 7th – 12th grade facilitators. To support the parents and facilitators, I produced several instructional videos posted on YouTube.  We had two successful Zoom based math tournaments. Here is our Math Cheer!  Feedback: “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 schools with in-person clubs.  Chaired the 15th Annual E=MC²  tournament as a multi-school hybrid-Zoom event.  Twenty-six teams from 11 schools participated with teams meeting at their home school Zooming in for the individual and team events.
  

• 2022 – 2023  Re-established in-person Math Clubs at all five CCUSD schools including coach training workshops. Chaired the 16th Annual E=MC²  tournament as in person event. Conducted an series of Introduction to CGI for Parents at two CCUSD elementary schools.
  

• 2023 – 2024 Established Culver City district-wide Sunday math enrichment program focusing on complex math problem-solving for 4th and 5th graders facilitated by high school assistant coaches. Chaired the 17th Annual E=MC²  tournament. Joined a writing class and the January 30, 2024 writing prompt was, “What decade would you like to be living in and what would you like to be doing?” I was surprised and delighted by what I wrote, and hope you are too!
  

• 2025 Chaired the 18th Annual E=MC²  Tournament on March 15, 2025. Years of teaching on Zoom and making my videos crystallized many of my ideas and motivated me to build on those ideas.  My new manuscript is the culmination of my sixty-year career as an educator and focuses on the importance of teaching students how to unpack a problem.  The critical role of learning from mistakes is a central theme.  My goal is to share my ideas with as many teachers and students as possible.

Retirement could not be more fun!!!

My former professional life at UCLA Anderson School

• The integration of the Management Library and Computing Center into the Anderson Computing & Information Services is my UCLA legacy.  This decade long journey is detailed in Collaborative Convergence: Merging Computing and Library Services at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA.
  
• My role as Assistant Dean and Director, Anderson Information Systems 1980 - 2006 is nicely summarized in the School's retirement article.
• The article The Information-Age Mindset: Changes in Students and Implications for Higher Education, the cover story in fall 2000 EDUCAUSE Review, captured the behavioral changes in our university students that I had observed. I think this was the most important article I had written.

• The most challenging research question I investigated was in the 1990s with the introduction of the personal computer and subsequent tsunami of data and information flooding an individual: How could one learn to manage all this information? My 1998 paper Personal Knowledge Management:  Who? What? Why? Where? When? How? addressed this issue. The paper is cited on Wikipedia in the History and Background crediting me 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 Implications of Emerging Information Technologies class (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.
• How to Study Mathematics, Chemistry, Statistics and Physics, SKIL Publishing Company, Second printing 1980.
  
• Lower grade (K - 3) teacher, UCLA Lab School 1975-1976; integrated multi-level classroom environment.
  
• Math Enrichment Teacher through Project SEED, Compton Unified School District, 1970--1972.
• Statistics Instructor, West LA, East LA, and Trade Tech Community Colleges, LA Junior College District, 1970-1973.
  
• High school math substitute teacher, Los Angeles Unified School District, 1967 -- 1969.
• Junior high math teacher, West Islip Unified School District, Long Island, New York, 1966-1967.
• California Standard Junior College Teaching Credential, 1970.
  
• California Standard Secondary Teaching Credential, 1971.
• California Standard Elementary Teaching Credential, 1974.

My education all in California

• Morning Side Elementary School, San Fernando, grade K - 4
• Monlux Elementary School, North Hollywood, grade 5 - 6
• Van Nuys Junior High School, Van Nuys, grade 7
• Madison Junior High School, North Hollywood, grade 8 - 9
• North Hollywood High School, North Hollywood, grade 10 - 11
• Norwalk High School, Norwalk, grade 12
• Cerritos Community College, Norwalk, 1960-1962
• UCLA, 1962-63
• Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno), BS Mathematics 1966
• California State University, Los Angeles, MS Mathematics, 1969
• UCLA, PhD Mathematics Education, 1976