MATHEMATICS EDUCATION FORUM

FIELDS MATHEMATICS EDUCATION FORUM
MINUTES - NOVEMBER 24, 2001

PRESENT: Doug McDougall, Stewart Craven, Shirley Dalrymple, Lynda Graham, George Gadanidis, Ann Kajander, Margaret Sinclair, Geoffrey Roulet., Tom S., Melanie Myers, Julie Kretchman, Ysbrand deBruyn, Gila Hanna, Dragan Martinovic, Ken Davidson, Gary Flewelling, Peter Taylor, Bradd Hart

REGRETS: Ed Barbeau

The Steering Committee has structured a very different Agenda for the November meeting. Consideration of Minutes and Reports from the majority of Task Forces and other Groups have been moved to the January Meeting.

AGENDA
10:00 - 10:45 The Fields On-Line Conference - Stewart Craven, Doug McDougall
- discussion about conference attendance: full participation, variety of individuals from different locations and parts of the world
(ie. Normway)
- introduction to conference by speakers: Jonathan Borwein and Ann Heide
- 7 groups in a.m. - mixed levels, visions discussion and reporting
- groups in p.m. - elementary levels, issues/challenges of on-line learning
- p.m. - presentation rotations (next time have these earlier during conference to promote discussions throughout)
Jonathan Borwein - nationwide initiatives
Eric Muller - role of Fields

4 Writers:
Geoff - preamble of Fields - development of task force - background of white paper - history of on-line (general) - references to Jonathan and Ann - conclusions	George - working group visions
Lynda - issues/challenges	Doug - specific/broad recommendations

Timeline:
1st draft	January 7, 2002
2nd	Mid February
March 2nd - forum members and participants read
Final	TBD

Audience - Ministry of Education, Directors of Education, Superintendents, Independent Learning Centres, Corporations, Publishers

10:45 - 11:30 "Mathematics Background Survey" - analysis, messages and action - Miroslav Lovric (McMaster University)
My agenda is to discuss:
* give basic info on the survey
* discuss what was done well, what was not done well
* discuss correlation with students' success in my course
* plan for action: what to do next, how to improve things
There is lots of data, and lots of issues I could discuss. It would help me a lot if you can tell me what interests you about the survey, i.e. what questions should I be discussing.

11:30 - 12:30 Light lunch

12:30 - 2:00 "Journey Through Calculus" - Bill Ralph (Brock University)
Bill is the developer of this multimedia-learning environment.
- interactive journey with all problems on-line
- concrete settings ---› play
- playing ---› increase in motivation
- overall increase in student understanding