Explain this
Vision 2014
Meeting of the General Council • Sat 18 Jan 2014
Report from the Communications Group
Room C17 • Institute of Education, University of Durham
Please send any contributions to 2014@atm-mail.org.uk before 30 Jun 09.
150 people attended the 2013 ATM conference in Lincoln. Three sessions were presented remotely by the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers and one was presented from Japan. These had proved popular sessions where two-way real-time video-conferencing had allowed a lively discussion on home education as it relates to mathematics with a live link with the parents and tutors involved with School of the Air in Alice Springs. 2 500 people attended the conference through the multi-channel video-conference link.
Additional notes regarding communications
- We are well advanced on developing:
- Ways on which web can support devolved membership control
- More promotion of specialist representatives to media
- Greater social networking with/for/around maths education teachers
- Video conferencing used for meetings.
- Branch meetings addressed by video conference workshop are proving successful.
- Local branch meetings for higher level teaching assistants have shown mixed success.
- Recently, the Home Educators Member Group provided more webcasts on ideas for using the new e-resources on 'Getting to Grips with the Number System' and 'Exploring and Questioning and Investigating'.
- Initial teething problems with the digital printing on demand system seem to have been ironed out and are now achieving the savings originally predicted.
- John from Kampala had trained as a teacher at Homerton, Cambridge and, as a trainee, had joined the Cambridge ATM branch. Back in Kampala he continued his membership and continues to 'attend' Cambridge ATM branch meetings through a video-conferencing link. Not surprisingly, John is now establishing a Kampala ATM branch which will meet in the Nakasero Primary School - synchronised with the Cambridge meeting to share ideas and resources.
- We are adding value to existing resources on website and developing a new resources central professional thing like Skolecom.
- Mary, a member in Canada, had found some interesting moving images when browsing her Flickr web account and wondered how she might use them in her maths lessons. She reports that after a matched search she found the same resources linked from the ATM website and was delighted with the additional video notes, questioning ideas and teacher prompts provided alongside. She has now added her own video and notes illustrating how she she used the resources. = "Webs that work for us"
Tie-ins with other organisations
- Following the successful project with the British Olympics where ATM hosted sports data and interpretations which were packaged and interpreted for primary and secondary schools to use in creative ways, ATM has since established links with a number of other organisations
- Eden Project, Cornwall - we created a mathematics trail for the Eden Project site incorporating global statistics and data interpretation, a separate trail focusing on two and three dimensional shapes including polyhedra, Fibonacci and other number series.
- ATM is currently negotiating with English Heritage to provide mathematical input to a pilot series of trails and guides focussing on a wide range of mathematical topics in five of their properties. These, it is expected, will be funded by English Heritage and other sponsors.
Office
- The transition to a distributed home/tele-working office staff has been very successful and cost effective. With digital printing on demand and the use of contracted out storage and distribution the office requirements have been readily accommodated in employees homes.
- The concomitant costs of providing equipment, alterations and networking facilities have been saved within the 24 month period anticipated.
- Occasional physical meetings for administrative staff, general council and others have been accommodated in schools, local authority facilities and hotels.
Data Handling
- All membership management, accounting, reporting and administrative computing functions are now either managed online by our web data manager or through use of 'cloud computing' based on Google Apps. All documents can now be collaboratively shared (selectively where necessary) and response time from creating, through drafting, editing and amending through to final publication is faster by a factor of five than it was, say, five years ago.
- Members are able to handle all membership issues online.
Online advertising revenue
- Following the great improvement in the ability to apply appropriate filters to adverts placed on our website, blogs, social networking and other online interactive tools, the revenue from this stream has significantly increased and now makes up 20% of annual revenue.
Please send any contributions to 2014@atm-mail.org.uk before 30 Jun 09.
