Discussions

Your Name and Title: Gordon Hamilton (MMath, PhD)

School, Library, or Organization Name:  MathPickle.com

Country from Which You Will Present:  Canada

Language in Which You Will Present:  English

Target Audience (such as primary school teachers, high school administrators, students, etc.):  

K-12 teachers

Short Session Description (one line):  

Using very tough problems in the mathematics classroom can inspire top students while removing the stigma of failure from the bottom students.

Full Session Description (as long as you would like):  

How can you inspire the top students in your class without losing the bottom students?  How can you help the bottom students without boring the top students?  Engaging the full spectrum of student ability is the number one challenge that teachers face.  

MathPickle.com helps by finding those gems of mathematics that are so beautiful, they belong in every mathematics curriculum worldwide.  

Many of these gems are unsolved problems of mathematics from the last 100 years.  They can be understood by children, but remain unsolved after being tackled by great mathematicians.  They can be used in the math classroom both to inspire the top students, and to combat math-phobia by removing the stigma of failure.

MathPickle and The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) are seeking sponsors to put up a $1,000,000 prize for each of thirteen unsolved problems - one for each grade K-12 - the prize money to be split between the person who solves the problem and their most inspirational K-12 teacher. 

See www.MathPickle.com for YouTube videos of these $1,000,000 problems being used in real classrooms.

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:  MathPickle.com

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