ICME-12 Mini Conference 2012

WFNMC will be hosting a mini-conference on 07 July, the day before ICME-12 starts in Seoul. The following information is provided by WFNMC President Maria Falk de Losada.

The venue will be at COAX, the ICME-12 venue. The idea is two morning and two afternoon sessions with lunch, morning and afternoon breaks for everyone. One room for 80 persons (so nothing in parallel). We are trying to distribute themes so as to have speakers at the same session talking about the same thing and thus promote dialogue. This is what is proposed in the June number of the WFNMC Journal.

There are three spaces that WFNMC and its members will have to enrich and focus work in the field of challenging mathematics; the first is the WFNMC Miniconference to be held on 07 July, the day before ICME-12 begins, the second are the meetings of WFNMC that will be held during the Congress, and thirdly there are the contributions that WFNMC members and all of our readers can make to the proceedings of Topic Study Group 34, The role of mathematics competitions and other challenging contexts in the teaching and learning of mathematics. The aim is to provide different scenarios that will enable us to generate not only an exchange of perspectives, but experiences that will allow participants to mold, hone and reshape the ideas driving the work they have been doing in challenging mathematics. Strong initiatives that have prospered in one environment may also thrive in another when properly adapted to fit local conditions and aspirations.

Each Topic Study Group has been allotted four 90 minute sessions at ICME-12. The organizing team of TSG34 aims to promote true dialogue and exchange of ideas by devoting two of those sessions to challenging mathematics beyond the classroom and one to working with teachers. I would like to see all of the reporting on competitions in one of these sessions, research and activities (programs) beyond the classroom different from competitons to be addressed in another, and all of the reporting on activities (programs) preparing teachers to introduce more challenging mathematics in their classrooms to be reported a third session.

One of the two WFNMC sessions will be devoted to awards and other important business. I believe the other should complement the topic study group session dedicated to reporting on research and new activities (programs) in the area of competitions.

At the Miniconference, we aim to have two national exhibitions (by invitation) relating to challenging mathematics (both in and beyond the classroom, both competitions and other challenging activities and environments) that would be open for browsing at midday, during the breaks, and after the final afternoon session. There will be four sessions, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, each of 90 minutes, devoted to (1) problem creation; (2) the development of students' ability to think mathematically; (3) the development of teachers ability to think mathematically and creatively and of their capacity to create and/or use challenging problems in their teaching; and (4) resources for the student and the teacher (journals, books, webpages, etc.).

We invite all our readers to prepare their contributions; your contributions will not only contribute to the consolidation of work in the field of challenging mathematics itself, but furthermore with help to put forth a program that will attract and enrich the professional lives of teachers attending ICME 12 as well as math educators from other fields and specialties.

There is a proposal that one of the WFNMC sessions be devoted to "Building bridges between research and competitions problems".