Summary of presentations
Prepared by David Talbot
Note: Those interested in working/collaborating on any of the presented themes are encouraged to contact theme leader(s) whose emails are provided.
1) Spatial Reasoning - Walter Whiteley (slides) and Sheryl Sorby (TedX video)
1) Walter presented a video of Shery Sorby talking at TedX
2) Sheryl’s talk summarized some of the difficulties experienced by students where spatial reasoning is important to grasp the concepts and principles, e.g Descriptive Geometry.
3) She highlighted particularly the gender differences where girls are at a disadvantage and have more difficulty developing spatial reasoning skills. One of the contributing factors is the “toys” used in childhood, where boys playing with Lego, for example, are honing their spatial reasoning skills, while girls playing with dolls are not. As a result, a product has been developed particularly for girls, “GoldiBlox”.
4) Walter mentioned research using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) indicating which parts of the brain are being used during numerical and language activities - highlighting the “spatial” parts of the brain.
5) He ended by proposing a new collaborative project on aging and mathematics, working with the Brain Project at Baycrest hospital.
2) First Nations’ Mathematics Education - Danielle Blair (slides)
1) Danielle highlighted her hands-on experience at several schools across the province of Ontario, aligning mathematics instruction with the various cultural paradigms and life experiences of the students.
2) She stressed the absolute necessity of developing open discussion and consultation with community members. She said, “You can never go wrong if you have cultural partners on the project of curriculum development.”
3) Mathematics Software - Laurent Bernardin and Louise Krmpotic (slides)
1) As representatives of MapleSoft, one of Fields’ corporate sponsors, Laurent and Louise stressed the fact that “students learn by doing”.
2) The traditional education model is failing to take advantage of the significant opportunities driven by or offered by technology (e-education).
3) New capabilities of continuous assessment and feedback are helping.
4) Misuse of technology can make things much worse.
5) Their approach is summarized under the title E^4
1) Exposition - “Here is the concept.”
2) Exploration - “Do I understand the concept?”
3) Exercises - “Can I recall and practically apply the concept?”
4) Evaluation - “Can I demonstrate proficiency using the concept?”
6) Reference was made to the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Education in Mathematics, an outreach organization developing courseware and website for enriched teaching materials for high school students of mathematics.
7) Also mentioned was The Perimeter Institute’s Summer School for Young Physicists (ISSYP).
8) The CME members are invited to help around discussions on the content and study the criteria to use to evaluate content.
4) Computational Thinking in Mathematics Education - George Gadanidis (slides) and Lisa Floyd (slides)
1) A number of examples of math/coding problems and the software tools used to develop solutions were presented (Python, SpheroBall, MakerSpace, Chipitronics, Makey/Makey, Poppet).
2) This topic is a proposed project to be undertaken in partnership with the Centre.
3) Participants and partners are invited to express interest in assisting.
4) Of additional interest is researching the use of these tools in teacher education settings.
5) Mathematics Cognition, Culture, and Society - Marcel Danesi (paper presented)
1) Marcel presented a linguist’s (semiotician’s) view of mathematics and cognition.
2) He described Cognitive Science as “Semiotics with Money,” thus allowing or spawning research in areas otherwise starved of funding.
3) There are several areas of future research here to consider for the Centre.
4) La Joie de Connaitre
