[IAEP] Join John Mason Wednesday, February 22, 2pm ET at Math Future online

[Maria Droujkova]

 LOG IN February 22, 2012 at 2pm Eastern US time: *
http://tinyurl.com/math20event<https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?password=M.FCAF787B38E30D58F943EB7232EE27>
*
During the event, John Mason will lead a conversation about multiplication
as scaling, and answer questions about his books, projects and communities.

All events in the Math Future weekly series:
http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/events
The recording will be at: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/JohnMason
Your time zone: http://bit.ly/wQYN1Y

Event challenge!
What good multiplication tasks about scaling do you know?
Share links and thoughts!

John writes about elastic multiplication: "It is often said that
'multiplication is repeated addition' when what is meant is that 'repeated
addition is an instance of multiplication'. I have been developing some
tasks which present 'scaling as multiplication' based around familiarity
with elastic bands. Participants would benefit from having an elastic
(rubber) band to hand which they have cut so as to make a strip; wider is
better than thinner if you have a choice."

 About John Mason[image: John_Mason.gif]
John Mason has been teaching mathematics ever since he was asked to tutor a
fellow student when he was fifteen. In college he was at first unofficial
tutor, then later an official tutor for mathematics students in the years
behind him, while tutoring school students as well. After a BSc at Trinity
College, Toronto in Mathematics, and an MSc at Massey College, Toronto, he
went to Madison Wisconsin where he encountered Polya's film 'Let Us Teach
Guessing', and completed a PhD in Combinatorial Geometry. The film released
a style of teaching he had experienced at high school from his mathematics
teacher Geoff Steel, and his teaching changed overnight.

His first appointment was at the Open University, which involved among
other things the design and implementation of the first mathematics summer
school (5000 students over 11 weeks on three sites in parallel). He called
upon his experience of being taught, to institute active-problem-solving
sessions, which later became investigations. He also developed project-work
for students in their second year of pure mathematics. In 1984 he wrote
Thinking Mathematically with Leone Burton and Kaye Stacey, which has turned
into a classic (translated into four languages), and is still in use in
many countries around the world with advanced high school students, with
graduates becoming school teachers, and with undergraduates in courses in
which students are invited to think about the nature of doing and learning
mathematics. Learning and Doing Mathematics was originally written for Open
University students, then modified for students entering university
generally.

At the Open University he led the Centre for Mathematics Education in
various capacities for fifteen years, which produced the influential
Routes-to Roots-of Algebra, and numerous collections of materials for
teachers at every level. His principal focus is thinking about mathematical
problems, and supporting others who wish to foster and sustain their own
thinking and the thinking of others. Other interests include the study of
how authors have expressed to students their awareness of generality,
especially in textbooks on the boundary between arithmetic and algebra, and
ways of working on and with mental imagery in teaching mathematics. The
book Practitioner Research Using The Discipline of Noticing is one
manifestation of a lifelong collection of tactics and frameworks for
informing the teaching of mathematics. Along the way he has articulated a
way of working developed at the Centre which provides methods and an
epistemologically well founded basis for practitioners to develop their own
practice, and to turn that into research.

You can learn more about collaborating with John Mason at his site
http://mcs.open.ac.uk/jhm3/

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
919-388-1721

Make math your own, to make your own math
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20120220/3aa64ec9/attachment.html>