For those that are just joining in, here is the text of my original blurb on the Connections Project, written about a month and a half ago. [start] --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Connections Project – Dave Coulson (starting 2014) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Here’s an experiment in math education. I don’t think that this is very common in high school math. What if a bunch of kids volunteered for a maths course and got to choose what they learned on any day? What sort of maths would they choose to learn? Things they already know about or things they don’t yet know about? Things they’ve heard about but never seen? Would they choose anything at all? This is an experiment in curiosity: if kids are allowed to follow their curiosity in mathematics, where will it lead them? More importantly, what kind of attitude will they develop towards mathematics if they can choose where to go with it? This is my project in math learning. It is not intended to replace the good math and science courses that already exist at school but to operate in parallel with them, and outside of the traditional school framework. The key difference is that there is no agenda, no guidelines, no prescribed content, no NCEA credits. Each time we meet, we talk about what sounds like fun to explore, and we explore it. When interest in a topic fades, we choose another topic. And what is a topic? To some extent it’s a checklist of mathematical procedures, but to another extent it’s the time and place in which those procedures were developed and the times and places where those procedures have found use. Most maths was invented by people who wouldn’t have even called themselves mathematicians and who would be very surprised to find out what we have done with their ideas since then. We can learn real stories about real people confronted with real problems. Interested? We might also consider how (say) trigonometry and geometry are used in science and engineering today, in ways that have nothing to do with real objects, like finding the area under a graph line. That could take us into electrical theory or fluid science or accelerations or architecture. That’s the thing: we don’t know where we will go with these investigations, or how deeply we will go, or whether we will go anywhere at all. It’s all an experiment to see how far students will go when the only thing driving them is their own curiosity. I’ve called this the Connections Project because I want students to see how maths connects with everything it touches: physics, astronomy, psychology, civil engineering, just to name the subjects I am most familiar with. I am as much interested in the history and social impact of mathematics as I am in the maths itself. But of course I don’t know all the answers to the questions that the students will ask. And so the project connects us to the internet which thereafter connects us to anything and everything else. I anticipate three hour-long meetings per week with half a dozen or so motivated students in the range of Years 9-10. This is certainly not going to be an I-talk-you-listen kind of project. I want students to ask me questions and suggest to me what we should study because only in that way can I see them become self-reliant learners who will have a curiosity about maths long after I have said goodbye to them. Questions are as important as answers. I foresee a time soon after the Project begins when kids can spend one of those weekly sessions in front of a computer collecting pictures and videos and interesting stories to share with the group the following week, and hopefully amongst that there will be material I haven’t seen before which will get me as curious as anyone else. Accidental discoveries will form a large part of the course, with any luck because accidental discoveries are a very big part of science. ‘Homework’, such as it is, might consist of finding an answer to a question but then finding a new question arising from that same answer. I am a Teacher Aide with the Junior School and have worked there for about five years. I am also a graduate in mathematics and psychology with a very long teaching background following that, spanning tertiary institutions and private tuition as well as work in a primary school. I am also very, very curious about science, maths and history. I love looking at the motivations and folly behind the world’s best inventions and the accidental discoveries that sometimes came out of those investigations. Hopefully I can meet kids who are (or will be) as interested in these things as I am. -Dave Coulson, Jan 2014. [end]
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 04:33:12 +0000
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