Technology partner, Texas Instruments, recently awarded Paraparaumu College maths teacher and MOTIS project participant, Paula Spence, a scholarship to attend Texas Instruments’ T3 (Teachers Teaching Technology) International Conference being held in February 2006.
The three-day conference in Denver Colorado is described as one of the pre-eminent development learning forums for science and maths educators, and will showcase the latest hand-held technology and provide training and ideas on how the technology can be introduced and used in the classroom.
Gleaning ideas and information on how to more effectively and creatively use the graphics calculator is Paula’s priority while at the conference.
“For me it’s about getting exciting and interesting activities to use in the classroom that engage the students and also to pass (the knowledge) on to all the other teachers who are interested in using this technology,” says Paula.
Paula was awarded the scholarship after submitting a paper to Texas Instruments on using graphic calculators to study binomial distribution theorem, which is a statistical theory looking at the distribution of successful outcomes given a set number of trials of data.
Using her Year 13 statistics class, Paula’s self-described “quirky” experiment took 10 images of well-known people and gathered data using the graphic calculators to assess the probability of the class guessing, rightly or wrongly, who the famous faces were.
“It generated an enormous amount of discussion. I thought of using not so well-known people as that influences the probabilities.”
Texas Instruments New Zealand education manager, Yvonne Blanch, is thrilled by the award and hopes the win will encourage other teachers to enter the trans-Tasman competition in the future.
“Kiwi teachers have been a bit slow to enter this type of competition but hopefully Paula’s win will make a few more enter,” says Yvonne.
A maximum of six scholarships are offered annually and all submissions are entered anonymously. This year five scholarships were awarded with two of them coming to New Zealand.
