An application to EPSRC (PPA11) for support for Motivate mathematics video-conferences for schools

这一视频会议项目将数学家和科学家与英国各地的中小学联系起来，英国学校与南非、美国、巴基斯坦、香港、新加坡和印度之间也建立了国际联系。大多数讲者是研究数学家和科学家，要么是知名的学生，要么是博士生，而其他人则在工业界工作，或者是目前的课堂教师，他们拥有特定的专业知识。该计划的目的是提高参与学校学生的总体教育抱负，拓展他们的智力，培养他们的沟通技能和信心，并向他们展示数学可能在他们的未来发挥作用。最常见的形式是大约相隔一个月的两次视频会议研讨会。在第一个视频会议中，专家演讲者向学生讲述为什么他们选择学习数学、物理或工程学并以研究为职业，然后带领学生探索迄今涵盖的主题/例子，其中包括运动数学、疾病动力学的数学模型、雪崩的流体动力学、迷宫和迷宫、法医数学和全球债务。然后，在视频会议期间，为学生设置后续项目工作，包括对该主题的合作调查工作。学生们有机会从事丰富和扩展正常数学/科学课程的项目，并使他们能够发展可转移的技能，以激励他们的小组并展示他们的研究。然后，学生们将他们的发现提交给演讲者和其他参与的学校，并在几周后的第二次视频会议上回答同行和专家的问题。六年级会议和一些针对年轻群体的会议包括一天的大师班和分组研讨会。还有一些长时间的项目，持续一学年以上，让学校有机会在一个扩展的项目上相互合作。每次会议都有大约4到6所不同学校参加，该项目向任何学校开放申请。会议非常受欢迎，课程总是超额认购/大多数主要课程会议的等待名单上都有实际参与的学校--反馈非常积极。此外，所有学校都可以在Motivate网站(www.Motivate.maths.org)上免费获得项目任务和辅助说明，因此该方案的覆盖范围更广，许多学校利用这些资源支持暑期学校或数学日活动。在过去一学年(2006/7学年)，Motivate网站的网站访问量达50万次，点击量为675万次。Motivate项目协调员Jenny Gage博士是一位经验丰富的教师，拥有数学教育博士学位。激励项目与教师密切合作，教师在指导学生和评估方案方面发挥着重要作用。该项目为持续专业发展提供机会，帮助教师建立和扩展学科知识，并使他们能够探索和试验视频会议潜力所提出的新教学策略。目前的建议是支持、继续和发展这个现有的高度成功的项目，基于其在当前学术研究人员与英国和海外学校学生之间建立联系的出色记录，同时为目标受众提供一个经过测试和测试的界面，以便于访问的格式和适当的水平展示与EPSRC相关的研究。

The Motivate video-conferencing project links mathematicians and scientists to primary and secondary schools across the whole of the UK, with international links between UK schools and South Africa, the USA, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Singapore and India too. Most speakers are research mathematicians and scientists, either established or PhD students, while others work in industry, or are current classroom teachers who have particular expertise to offer.The aim of the programme is to raise the general educational aspirations of the participating school students, to stretch them intellectually, to develop their communication skills and confidence and to show them that mathematics might have a part to play in their futures.Motivate conferences are highly interactive. The most common format is a pair of video-conferenced seminars about a month apart. In the first video-conference, the expert speaker talks to the students about why they chose to study maths, physics or engineering and pursue research as a career, and then leads the students in exploring the topic / examples covered so far include, among many others, the maths of sport, the mathematical modelling of disease dynamics, the fluid dynamics of avalanches, labyrinths and mazes, forensic mathematics and global debt. Follow-up project work is then set for the pupils to work on between the video-conferences, involving collaborative investigative work into the topic. The students have the opportunity to work on projects that enrich and extend the normal mathematics / science curricula and allow them to develop transferable skills in motivating their groups and presenting their research. The students then present their findings to the speaker and the other schools involved, and answer questions from their peers and the expert in the second video-conference a few weeks later. Sixth-form conferences and some conferences for younger age groups consist of a single day master class with break-out group workshops. There are also long projects, which last over a school year to give schools the opportunity to work with each other on an extended project.Each conference involves a group of around 4-6 different schools, and the programme is open to application from any school. The conferences are enormously popular, with the programme always oversubscribed / most of the main programme conferences have waiting lists of as many schools again as can actually be involved - and feedback is extremely positive. In addition, the project tasks and supporting notes are freely available to all schools on the Motivate website (www.motivate.maths.org), and the programme therefore has an additional reach, with many schools using these resources to support summer schools or Maths Day activities. Over the past school year (2006/7) the Motivate website received 500,000 site visits, or 6.75 million hits.The Motivate Project coordinator, Dr Jenny Gage, is an experienced teacher, with a PhD in mathematics education. The Motivate project works closely with teachers, who have a significant part to play in directing their students and evaluating the programme. The project offers CPD opportunities in building and extending teachers' subject knowledge and enabling them to explore and experiment with new teaching strategies suggested by the potential of video-conferencing.The current proposal is to support, continue and develop this existing highly successful project, building on its outstanding track record in creating links between current academic researchers and school students throughout the UK and overseas, while providing a tried and tested interface for the presentation of EPSRC-related research in an accessible format and at an appropriate level for the target audience.