Phil Wagner suggested I let the ECT community know about an upcoming computer-based math education summit (just a month away) that I am helping to organize. Here is the motivation for the summit:
Following
the worldwide reaction to Conrad Wolfram's TED talk "Stop teaching
calculating; start teaching math" this summit addresses the question - In
an era of ubiquitous computing, how should we rebuild maths education
from the ground up, to keep pace with and drive progress in the real
world?There's a real momentum for math education reform; Conrad Wolfram founded computerbasedmath.org to
address the growing chasm between math in education and math outside,
between the increasingly irrelevant school math curriculum that
contrasts with the critical and growing importance of math and its uses
in the real world. Many concerned parties have observed how many of
those involved in school math fail to appreciate the total
transformation and fundamental change that computers have brought to
this ancient subject in recent decades. The Computer-Based Math summit
will catalyze much needed and long overdue changes.
The summit is in London, November 10 and 11.
Details are at the summit site:
A tentative schedule is posted here:
Notable speakers will include:
Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford
Ralph Lucas, UK House of Lords
Paul Wilmott, Founder of Wilmott Magazine
Gary Bitter, Past president of ISTE
Caroline Meeks, Past project manager for "Sugar on a Stick"
Charles Fadel, Founder of Center for Curriculum Redesign
Hylke Koers, Content Innovation Manager for Elsevier
Maria Droujkova, Director of Natural Math
Scott Gray, O'Reilly Media – Director of Make: Mathematics
Joerg Sixt, Publishing Editor, Mathematics for Springer-Verlag London
I welcome your questions, comments, and suggestions about the summit or about computerbasedmath.org.
I would greatly appreciate it if you would spread the word to others who might benefit from this information.
Sincerely,
Sol Lederman for computerbasedmath.org
sol at wolfram dot com