Tracking feature tracking quite nicely, response-wise

Walkthrough of our new tracking feature, with Irish accent

Long time visitors to the blog might recall the occasional self-congratulatory reference to the new tracking feature on our forthcoming ActiveTeach software. What the hey, we think it’s pretty nifty.

ActiveTeach puts the textbook up onscreen for whole class teaching. The new tracking feature enables the teacher to gather information on the class response to every single activity or exercise, with, oh, about 5 seconds total effort per lesson. A tracking screen then shows topic status, traffic-light-style, and it’s dead easy to see what needs attention. Or indeed, simply what topics you’ve covered. In a future world, this information would then be beamed direct to your brain, but that’s Phase 2 territory for now.

Most importantly, teachers we’ve shown it to, “get it” instantly. The response has been so positive, we consider the tracking feature now worthy of the ultimate accolade: a screencapture walkthrough that explains what we’re actually talking about.

CIOLUKWYK (Check it out, let us know what you think).

In praise of problem-solving: Dan Meyer speaks

Here’s a fascinating video clip we found on the TED site…  Dan Meyer is a Maths teacher in the US and gives a passionate defence of problem-solving as the way to teach:

Dan Meyer - TED talk - click to play

Problem-solving , alongside functional maths, is exactly what the new Maths specifications in the UK are all about.  Click here for more info about AO2 and AO3. 

Oh, and here’s a short, tongue-in-cheek video that we made, explaining problem-solving: Zen and the Art of AO3

New Education Secretary, Michael Gove on Maths

The new Education Secretary does not look like this.

The new Education Secretary looks like this.

Note to self – next time the country gets caught up in coalition arranging shenanigans, don’t go profiling the new Education Secretary until it’s officially officially confirmed exactly who it actually is. Damn you, Sky News!

Was it the tone of our earlier (now hastily deleted) post that ousted David Laws from contention at the last minute? Who knows, and er, oops, sorry if so, but anyhow it’s  Michael Gove we’re dealing with now.

If you’ve not heard it before, here’s Mr Gove’s take on what should be done with Maths, in a speech he gave waaaaaaay back in the old days – over two whole months ago.  Whether his ideas survive the trauma of hung-parliamentitis, we’ll find out over the next few weeks.

The most influential language on earth is not English, or Mandarin but maths. Mathematics is the means by which we make sense not just of the natural world around us but also lay the ground for discoveries yet to come.

The Pythagorean revolution was prelude to the astonishing flowering of classical philosophy which laid the foundations of the Western world. Galileo recognised that it was through mastery of mathematics that the music of the spheres could be heard by man, and the shape of the earth made real. The thrilling breakthroughs he and his contemporaries made helped mankind move from an age of superstition to the rule of reason.

The Enlightenment, mankind’s great period of intellectual flowering, the liberation from ignorance on which our current freedoms rest, was made possible by the work of mathematicians like Leibniz and Newton.

Gauss, the prince of mathematicians, called maths ‘the queen of the sciences.’ Why? Because of what Wigner famously called ‘the unreasonable effectiveness of maths’ – the miracle whereby pure maths can, sometimes centuries later, find practical applications never originally dreamed of, and the way in which a mathematical formulation of a physical principle leads to extraordinarily precise descriptions and predictions.

…continues…

Update from QCDA on Functional Skills

QCDA has just updated its Functional Skills site for the first time since early November, and here’s the gist below. Still no further word though on its previously heralded Functional Skills Conference due for March 9th in London, but maybe we only dreamt it? Maybe it’s a Fictional Functional Skills Conference? Get in touch if you know better.

Free guide to functional skills – out today in SecEd

Included with 25th February edition of SecEd is a QCDA-sponsored supplement on functional skills and their position within the four qualification pathways for 14-19 year-olds – Apprenticeships, Diplomas, GCSEs and Foundation Learning. This free booklet guides readers through the need-to-know areas of functional skills, including case studies, interviews and practical advice. To get hold of your copy, look inside the SecEd, which is sent to every school, or visit www.sec-ed.co.uk

Functional skills in action – four new films launched

We’ve launching four short films on functional skills . These films look at some of the ways that pilot centres have been approaching delivery of functional skills within the 14-19 qualification pathways – GCSEs, Diploma, Apprenticeships and Foundation Learning. The films have been launched on the SecEd website, to coincide with the QCDA-sponsored functional skills supplement.

Factsheet on transition arrangements now available

We’ve now produced a factsheet on the transition arrangements for functional skills. The factsheet covers everything you should need to know about the transition from the pilot, to the national implementation.

First exam dates for new GCSE specification now available

The first batch of exam dates for AQA’s new GCSE Maths Specification 4360 is now available:

• Tuesday 9th Nov for Unit 1  Higher and Foundation
• Friday 12th Nov for Unit 2  Higher and Foundation
• Monday 7th March for Unit 1  Higher and Foundation
• Wednesday 9th March for Unit 2  Higher and Foundation

You can doublecheck this with the interactive exams timetable at http://www.modernisationonline.org.uk/comptimetable/ . This site is useful for creating a personal exams timetable for printing and downloading.

Keep an eye on the AQA website for details too.

Downloadable, customisable exam timetable

Zen and the Art of AO3: A transcendental explanation of the new AQA GCSE Maths Assessment Objectives…

We know some teachers have been struggling to understand what the new AO2 and AO3 Assessment Objectives are all about…  We struggled to start with. 

But after publishing two student books, consulting endlessly with the examiners, and writing umpteen practice questions on AO2 and AO3, we think we’ve sussed them.  Which makes this about the right moment to share this knowledge…

One of our authors happens to double as a Zen master and explains AO2 and AO3 in this short video in the only way he knows how.  It’s tongue-in-cheek, of course, but we hope teachers find it genuinely helpful:

Definitions of terms commonly used in maths teaching

This made us laugh, courtesy of http://sureshtcs005.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/maths-humour/

Maths terms commonly used in teaching, with their more accurate meanings…

CLEARLY: I don’t want to write down all the in-between steps.

TRIVIAL: If I have to show you how to do this, you’re in the wrong class.

OBVIOUSLY: I hope you weren’t sleeping when we discussed this earlier, because I refuse to repeat it.

RECALL: I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but for those of you who erase your memory tapes after every test, here it is again.

IT IS WELL KNOWN: See “Mathematische Zeitschrift”, vol XXXVI, 1892.

CHECK FOR YOURSELF: This is the boring part of the proof, so you can do it on your own time.

SKETCH OF A PROOF: I couldn’t verify the details, so I’ll break it down into parts I couldn’t prove.

HINT: The hardest of several possible ways to do a proof.

ELEGANT PROOF: Requires no previous knowledge of the subject, and is less than ten lines long.

SIMILARLY: At least one line of the proof of this case is the same as before.

PROOF OMITTED: Trust me, it’s true.

THE FOLLOWING ARE EQUIVALENT: If I say this it means that, and if I say that it means the other thing, and if I say the other thing…

BY A PREVIOUS THEOREM: I don’t remember how it goes (come to think of it, I’m not really sure we did this at all), but if I stated it right, then the rest of this follows.

TWO LINE PROOF: I’ll leave out everything but the conclusion.

BRIEFLY: I’m running out of time, so I’ll just write and talk faster.

LET’S TALK THROUGH IT: I don’t want to write it on the board because I’ll make a mistake.

PROCEED FORMALLY: Manipulate symbols by the rules without any hint of their true meaning.

QUANTIFY: I can’t find anything wrong with your proof except that it won’t work if x is 0.

Enthusiastic response to AQA GCSE Maths Evaluation Pack

Three weeks ago we published our Middle Sets Student Book - we blogged about it at the time, since it was the first resource in the series to publish and a big moment for us.  A week after that we published the free Evaluation Pack for the series, as well as launching an online evaluation site.  So, since then, the big questions concerning us have been:

How many teachers have requested an evaluation pack?  And how are they responding to it?  

Well the news is good, we’re happy to report.  Over 80% of AQA centres have so far requested, and been sent, an evaluation pack.   The ‘blue box with the chameleon’ contains a bunch of goodies to help choose the right resources:

• Evaluation Guide takes you through the full range of resources to support the AQA course
• Middle Sets Student Book – 640 pages of full-colour knock-out maths - the whole course content in one book!!
• ActiveTeach demo disc gives a real slice of the whizzy planning and front-of-class teaching software

If you’ve not already had a Pack, you can order it here.

Or, as we posted last week, you can evaluate online…  This includes a sneak preview of how our ActiveTeach CDs will work.

Functional Skills Conference on March 9th

QCDA

QCDA has just announced it’s planning a national conference on functional skills on 9 March in central London.

QCDA says “This conference, six months before functional skills are introduced nationally, is an opportunity for people to hear from senior employer, university and government figures on functional skills and the skills agenda. Please keep an eye on our website for further information.”

No further details on http://www.qcda.gov.uk/6062.aspx at the moment, but we’ll flag it up as soon as available.

Click here to find out more about the new AQA Functional Maths specification and Longman’s Functional Maths course, or click here to order a free evaluation pack.

Republic of Mathematics: just added excellent maths blog to our favorite links

We’ve just stumbled on Republic of Mathematics, an excellent blog written by Gary Davis.  It covers anything and everything to do with maths teaching from primary level right through to university.  The posts are plentiful, thoughtful and passionate.  We heartily recommend it!

Hard to know which posts specifically to mention…  There’s a great one on using algebra in probability, which could be the basis for an interesting activity with a top set at KS4.  And I enjoyed reading about the five-year-olds who were arguing over the largest number in the world – infinity of course.  Until one of them wondered about infinty +1…

There’s also a very regular and colourful stream of tweets from Republicofmath.