Well some of the videos look interesting but I don't agree with the title, what is recreational math?
It would be great if Maths could be made more interesting and students make their own unique discoveries etc. However as a former maths teacher I can tell you that structure exists for a reason.
In a class of maybe 30 students for one hour, the teacher can afford to give at best only 2 mins average time to each student. Some students may work very well independently, but others would take advantage of the freedom to mess about.
Even if the students were focused how is a teacher with so little time per student supposed to pick up a random piece of work and then decide if the child is doing something of worth.
The Maths curriculum needs to be rethought for the information age, but the solutions need to be practical.
I think the Khan academy has a solution to this particular problem. Salman in his TED talk proposed that students view the videos in their own time for the basics, then engage in problem solving in class so that the teacher can devote much more attention to each student.
Experience with this shows that the kids simply don't watch the videos. It sounds brilliant - let the kids watch videos together, they can eat pizza, drink cola, laugh, text, watch the video again to get the bits they missed, and then come to class to work the problems and get help.
The experiment has been done - the vast majority of the kids don't watch the videos.
I'm pretty sure I read of it on a web site lunk to from here, but I don't have a record of it. I have seen it reported from at least two different people who tried it, but don't have a record of where I read it. Sorry.
EDIT:
I've found one reference to a teacher who's trying it but has some kids who don't watch the videos:
It would be great if Maths could be made more interesting and students make their own unique discoveries etc. However as a former maths teacher I can tell you that structure exists for a reason.
In a class of maybe 30 students for one hour, the teacher can afford to give at best only 2 mins average time to each student. Some students may work very well independently, but others would take advantage of the freedom to mess about.
Even if the students were focused how is a teacher with so little time per student supposed to pick up a random piece of work and then decide if the child is doing something of worth.
The Maths curriculum needs to be rethought for the information age, but the solutions need to be practical.