Our Motivate video-conferencing programme is offering a number of special extended year-long projects for KS3 students (age 11-14) in the 2009/10 year. Motivate videoconferences include highly interactive presentations between an expert speaker and participating schools, with project tasks on which students work collaboratively, followed by opportunities to present their work to the speaker and each other, and to engage in discussion with the speaker and other participating schools.
These extended projects aim to:

• enrich the mathematical experience of the students and teachers involved
• give students and teachers a sense of belonging to a mathematical community
• give students and teachers an opportunity to go beyond the normal curriculum and to use techniques from the curriculum in unfamiliar contexts
• help students see that maths is an interesting, relevant, living subject
• provide extended projects which will help students develop creative and critical thinking and problem solving skills
• provide project work which students can work on collaboratively or alone
• give students an opportunity to present their own work to an audience outside their own school, to answer questions and to receive feedback on it
• help students develop their communication and presentation skills
• address QCA Key Concepts and Key Processes

Each of these long projects will run from September 2009 until the summer of 2010. In each case, there will be a preliminary teacher briefing and then two live student video-conferences per term (a total of six). In addition, we will provide extensive project work on the topic for students to work on outside the video-conferences.

Extended project topics:

“It’s not that I’m smart...”
Speaker: Alan Parr (former Maths Advisor for Hertfordshire)
Albert Einstein said "It's not that I'm smart - I just stick with problems longer". In these sessions we will look at some problems that are worth sticking with. All are accessible and suitable even for non-Einsteins, and all offer a rich variety of potential mathematical exploration. We'll cover lots of work in Number and Algebra, Geometry and Measure.
Target age range: Any KS3

Reality Maths
Speaker: Adam Boddison (Further Maths Project, Warwickshire, former secondary and primary maths teacher)
This project will begin by focusing on the maths of buildings and outdoor environments with an emphasis on shape, space, estimation and measurement, involving very practical and hands-on activities and culminating in the students producing a maths trail based around the school grounds. Using Google Earth, students will then explore the maths found across the globe, making use of statistical averages (mean, median and mode) as well as being introduced to the fractal qualities of coastlines. Finally we will look at the mathematics that we find in the natural world, particularly the Fibonacci Sequence.
Target age range: Lower KS3

The Risks of Life
Speaker: Nadia Baker (MMP Risk Roadshow, former secondary maths teacher)
Is it worth playing the lottery? Does the skill and experience of the manager make a difference to a football team, or are the results too random for it to matter? When it looks to good to be true, what aren't they telling you? Which newspaper headlines are telling the truth? Why do coincidences happen so often? These sessions will engage students with questions like these through interactive game-show style videoconferences, enabling them to discover how mathematics will help them make sense of the real world in situations involving risk, probability, chance and uncertainty.
Target age range: Upper KS3

Costs and booking:

The cost for each of the long projects is £1,550 for a full year, payable in three termly instalments: two payments of £520 and one of £510.
For full details and to book online see the Motivate website.