How to Awaken a Generation of Lost Mathematicians is must share article, written by Global Math Project (GMP) ambassador, Junaid Mubeen. He explores the power of James Tanton’s Exploding Dots, a “simple yet extraordinarily flexible construct” that has the potential to “recondition students towards a new way of understanding mathematics”.
Junaid likens the possibilities of what the GMP projects can do for students in math to what Hour of Code project did for students in computing. The Hour of Code project was a highly successful “hook” activity which raised curiosity and interest in coding; students ended up wanting to pursue their activities at a deeper level, and most spent far more than the allotted hour doing coding. But Junaid reminds us that mathematics projects have an additional hurdle to overcome – the baggage of mathematics; a large backlog of fear and prejudices that students have accumulated through their school years.
Junaid gives an example of overcoming a certain mindset by trying something new. In his case, he challenged himself to uncover the artistic abilities he had thought were nonexistent by spending 15 minutes with Graham Shaw’s TED talk video. He discovered that he was able to draw.
Orlando Math Circle challenges everyone to take action in this Math learning revolution. What can you do? Are you a student, teacher or just someone who is passionate about changing the common misconceptions about mathematics? There’s a place for you.
How many times have you heard: “I am not a math person”, “I don’t have math brain” or “Math is boring” ? Let’s do away with those misconceptions and help students today realize that their minds are wired to understand and love the wonderful thing that math really is.
Help Orlando Math Circle bring GMP to our schools. Register @Globalmathproj and work with us to make a difference. There’s no limit to participation, and you can make your first volunteer activity a two-click one just by sharing this post. You can be a significant part of this international project, a project that aims to thrill 1 million students, teachers, and adults with an engaging piece of mathematics during one special week in 2017!
