Motivate: brief report for 2000-01

(Full evaluation to follow)

• Chris Budd, University of Bath, "Where in the World am I?" with Year 10 students from North London and Chennai (Madras)
• Rob Eastaway, who is a free-lance mathematician and writer, "League Tables/Cricket Ratings" with Year 9 students from Slough and Newcastle
• Keith Carne, University of Cambridge, "Strange Geometries" with Year 8 students from Belfast and North London

We are currently midway through our fourth videoconference, which is:

• Alan Beardon, University of Cambridge, "Euler's Relation and Topology" with Year 10 students from Glasgow and Birmingham. At the moment, the students are working on their projects, and we are looking forward to their presentations, which will take place during the second conference next Wednesday, 28 March.

During the summer term, we plan the following videoconferences:

• Tom Körner, University of Cambridge, topic still to be announced, with Year 9 students from the Wells area and Cape Town
• Janna Levin, University of Cambridge, a topic in the area of topology and cosmology, with Year 12 students from North London and provisionally Newcastle

We also hope to pilot a Motivate videoconference with Key Stage 1 students, between a school in Nottingham, and provisionally a school in the Blackburn area during the second half of the summer term. The speaker at this will be one of the people piloting Key Stage 1 numeracy material with Boots plc.

We hope to buy a mobile videoconferencing kit soon so that we can go to areas without suitable equipment, and show them what is possible, in the hopes that this will encourage schools then to invest in their own equipment. We would of course be happy to offer help in setting up and making use of this.

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