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Relevant initiatives

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RELEVANT INITIATIVES FORM

Title of Initiative / Project
Maths is B.E.A.U. (that is Beautiful Easy Amusing Useful)
Name of Organiser
IES Luis De Camoens
Start and ending date of the Initiative
2010-2012
Level
European
Was the initiative carried out in the framework of a funded project?
Yes
Funding Programme
LLP Comenius Multilateral Partnership
Title of the project
Maths is B.E.A.U. (that is Beautiful Easy Amusing Useful
Promoter
IES Luis De Camoens
Project number
2010-1-IT2-COM06-14377
Type of deliverables
Online course, Video, Didactical resource
Thematic area
Maths, ICT
Language of the deliverable
Italian, Other EU, Spanish, English, Other non EU
Target Group
Teachers, Students
Description of the initiative
The context
“What to learn and how to learn? Why to learn? Why is it, that it is so important to
learn mathematics? ... Mathematics for all is crucial for the democratic process in a
modern society. It gives citizens a better understanding of public matters and debates
and helps individuals to form their own opinions. Therefore it is very important how we
teach mathematics in our schools. What sort of mathematical teaching do we need in
order to improve the abilities of every individual to become a democratic citizen? ...
How do we ensure that “mathematics for all” will really be for all in the end (including
the problem of different cultural, ethnic, linguistic communities of students)? ... We
need more research in the didactical problems of teaching mathematics...”. According
to these statements from 'Proceedings of the 10th International Congress on
Mathematical Education, 2004 Denmark', with this project the partner schools have
tried to explore together new ways to communicate mathematics and to develop new
teaching methods. The idea was to motivate students with everyday-life contexts
(Project "Imagine a World Without Maths, can you?") and also to look for contexts that
are experientially real for the students and can be used as starting points for
progressive mathematization (activities for the subject “Mathematics in Food costing...
when we have to carry out a recipe” and Geometry activities about architectural
remarkable buildings and key art monuments in the surroundings of each partner city).
Teaching students to interpret critically the reality they live in, to understand its codes
and messages should be an important goal for compulsory education and not only
and this is what we tried to do with all the activities we carried out in our classes. The
teachers learnt a lot from each other in the friendly and scientifically challenging
atmosphere of their exchanges within this project.
Description of
the initiative
- The activities
- Attitudes to Maths: the purpouse of our first activity is gather
information about the attitudes of our students to Maths and their
lives. You will find two questionnaires, the results and photos of
our first international meeting in Viadana, Italy.
- A world without Maths: our second activity and international
543223-LLP-1-2013-1-LV-KA4- KA4MP
meeting in Ceuta, Spain. Maths is everywhere, but most of the
time it's hidden. Let's try to uncover it.
- Tour Guide: third international meeting in Enniskillen, Northern
Ireland. Have you ever noticedthat there is math in buildings
and monuments?
- Guess the price: fourth meeting in Charleville Mezière, France.
The students are going to investigate and compare prices in the
countries.
- Online games: fifth meeting in Kópagovur, Iceland. Winter won't
prevent us to have a good time playing games and discovering
the math behind them.
- Summary: our last meeting in Istanbul, Turkey. We will collect all
the outcomes of the project.
- Contests and games: our students take part in some
competitions during the project.
- The aims
to promote students’ interest in mathematics, overcoming the
reservations towards it
- to motivate every student towards mathematics
- to support the greatest development of capacities for each individual
student
- to make students aware that mathematics education is not
mathematics
- to increase knowledge, skills and aptitudes in the math's field for
European students
- to enlarge young people’s competence throughout their lives, for
their personal
fulfillment, motivation and future job satisfaction
- to improve the ability to develop and apply mathematical thinking in
order to solve a
range of problems in everyday situations
- to promote interest in foreign languages, team work, greater sense of
involvement,
student - centred initiatives
543223-LLP-1-2013-1-LV-KA4- KA4MP
- to foster friendship among students/teachers of partner schools.
We intend to address our efforts to all students, but particularly to
those in compulsory
education (14 – 16 years of age).
- to recover and reinforce knowledge/competence (above all logical
skills)
- to acquire new math's competence.
-
The results achieved
TwinSpace
A WORLD WITHOUT MATHEMATICS, CAN YOU ?
MATHEMATICS AND ARCHITECTURE
Questionnaire about students' attitudes to Maths
Research Maths and Prices
Math comes alive in creating computer games
LOGICAL GAMES
ORIENTEERING IN FRANCE AND SPAIN
LABORATORY ACTIVITIES ABOUT MATHS
MATHS PHOTO CONTEST
Math comes alive in creating computer games - Photos
Indroduction of Educational System in each country
More Information
Is a project with the aim of comunicate maths by other ways. The project tries to apply maths to every aspect of the real life. This is the web page: http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=5631221
Each partner has done some works related to a theme. For example, the spainsh: http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=6044894
or the French: http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=10347340
The web page shows us the work done by all the partners and some interesting ideas. But there is not a resource page to apply this ideas in other schools.
In conclusion, is a good project that have used a web page to share the activities that they were doing. It lacks of a external foreground.
Teachers’ Opinion
In the project, they have done very interesting activities and they show us the results. Is not difficult to navigate for the web and to find ideas. But there is not the documentation to reproduce easily the activities. Fortunately, is an inspirational page with photos, videos and slideshows.
All the activities are good, congratulations to the partners, I’m sure that students have taken profit of this project.
Students’ Opinion
I like this project because is a different way to learn maths. Sometimes maths classes are boring and we are not talking about the reality, only abstract numbers and symbols. This kind of projects allow us to see that everything that we study is useful for the real life.
I also like this project because they are talking with other students for other countries. IS not only about maths, is also about learning languages and visiting other countries. I seems fun and profitable for the real life.

Comments on this Relevant initiatives

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Date: 2015.03.12

Posted by Darina Berčakova (Slovakia)

• Why is the project (selected initiative) important?
This project declares the possibilities to see mathematics in various areas of everyday life.
• Will an initiative/project provide outputs that can help to overcome lack of students´ motivation to study science?
The outputs of this project are students´ works and that is the way how to pull them into the issue, how to arouse their interest and enthusiasm for working and understanding various contexts, discovering rules.
• Do you plan to test given outputs (with your students)?
Teacher:
Yes, for sure. I like this project because it points the possibilities how to show students the interesting aspects of mathematics; it is teaching young people to notice their surroundings. Also very interesting are the students' attitudes towards mathematics questionnaire (Italy - attitudes towards mathematics). Equally interesting is the tourist guide of the countries that participated in the project (Italy, Spain, Northern Ireland, France, Iceland, Turkey), which is oriented on the architecture, which is looking for mathematics.
• What do you think are the possibilities of the selected project to be successful in increasing students' interest in studying science subjects?

Student- Michal Jaroš
Thanks to this project, I started to enjoy some parts of the mathematics. I realised all the places where mathematics can be used. The most interesting fact is that I can improve communication with partners from the other countries, see their girls – e.g. in France, or find out what pancakes are the best and the cheapest in Europe. It's really fun and I don’t even have a feeling that I learn, but I do. That is how it should be in all the subjects! I would be happy if there were as many such activities as possible and learning would actually be just solving the problems from everyday life.

News

Dissemination Seminar in Florence

31 October 2015 The seminar has been held in ITIS “A. Meucci” one of the schools involved within Goerudio project activities. Its main aim was to promote the results of the project toward a broad sample of stakeholders even overcrossing the number of people directly involved in the production of project outcomes. This purpose has been totally achieved especially thanks to the participation of students and teachers coming from different schools or from other classes instead of those ones directly involved within the project activities.