Reflections on Pro D day
I attended the Professional Day at the BCAMT meeting in Surrey. It was a great meeting. A couple things that were exceptional for me:
1) I was in a group with Frederic Gourdeau during one of the breakout sessions. I didn't know who he was, but he was so smooth and beautiful with the problems we were working on. He used such creative ways of solving a problem - not just hammering through but seeing the beauty and symmetry of the lines. Frederic suggested that we were using the Cavalieri Principle to solve one of the problems. Call me starstruck but I really enjoyed this group work. I learned later the he spoke on problem solving at an earlier seminar. I'm sorry I missed that one.
2) I also took a seminar and later met Peter Liljedahl. It was very interesting to participate in his seminar to experience the 'flow' firsthand. I do wonder how/if one could use this strategy at higher levels of math. I experienced this seminar as more of a 'show' and in the end I still didn't make the concrete connection with how to use the flow technique at higher levels of math. This could be a result of my lack of in depth understanding of the underlying principles or it could be that there is simply no way to make the kinds of concrete connections in higher level math?
3) I got a lot of tips and links to other sources of information from all of the speakers. Marc Garneau provided some great links and ideas for problem solving. He did an excellent job of showing us the connection between elementary math and higher level math.
All in all, a great day! I hope you had some attentive and receptive students as well.
1) I was in a group with Frederic Gourdeau during one of the breakout sessions. I didn't know who he was, but he was so smooth and beautiful with the problems we were working on. He used such creative ways of solving a problem - not just hammering through but seeing the beauty and symmetry of the lines. Frederic suggested that we were using the Cavalieri Principle to solve one of the problems. Call me starstruck but I really enjoyed this group work. I learned later the he spoke on problem solving at an earlier seminar. I'm sorry I missed that one.
2) I also took a seminar and later met Peter Liljedahl. It was very interesting to participate in his seminar to experience the 'flow' firsthand. I do wonder how/if one could use this strategy at higher levels of math. I experienced this seminar as more of a 'show' and in the end I still didn't make the concrete connection with how to use the flow technique at higher levels of math. This could be a result of my lack of in depth understanding of the underlying principles or it could be that there is simply no way to make the kinds of concrete connections in higher level math?
3) I got a lot of tips and links to other sources of information from all of the speakers. Marc Garneau provided some great links and ideas for problem solving. He did an excellent job of showing us the connection between elementary math and higher level math.
All in all, a great day! I hope you had some attentive and receptive students as well.
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