A Message to Mathematicians
The MegaMath project grew out of frustration with the fact that the mathematics curriculum for elementary school students contains little of what mathematicians actually do, despite two very important facts:
- Many topics of current interest in mathmatics are accessible to young children as stories and games.
- Children will form their ideas about what mathematics is (and is not!) from the mathematics to which they are exposed.
Suggestions for browsing
-
Look at the reference section or
the chapters in
the MegaMath book to see what topics are covered.
- Some of the articles that describe using MegaMath in classrooms are written by mathematicians. These articles contain many topics of current mathematical interest that have been explored with school children. They also serve as a guide for you if you wish to share the mathematics that you find exciting with young children, too.
-
Look at the background and interests of the mathematicians
who have worked on MegaMath
-
Send mail. We appreciate your comments and suggestions for
additional topics.
-
Read the
mail to see how others have responded.
MegaMath Needs Collaborators!
- We appreciate you ideas for additional topics. If you have thought about approaches to your area of expertise that can help make concepts and ideas that you think are important clear to the uninitiated, please let us know. The broader our sampling of ideas in mathematics, the better these materials will be.
- When a "real" mathematician visits an elementary school classroom to share something interesting, both teachers and students benefit from a broadened understanding of what mathematics is. We encourage you to do this. For more information about professional mathematicians visiting school classrooms, see Computer SCIENCE in the Elementary School, Combinatorially-based Cryptography for Children and Adults, or contact us.
If you try them out yourself, we would like to know about it.
- If you have students who are interested in mathematics education, we would gladly be of assistance in helping
to design a project, and sharing our experiences with them.
- We are beginning to write online games for MegaMath, and are happy to provide Computer Science students of
all levels with ideas for (large and small) programming projects.
- Send us mail!
