MMI - Summer 2012

Maryland Mathematics Institute - Summer 2012

The Department of Mathematics at the College Park campus of the University of Maryland (UMD) is pleased to announce the third Maryland Mathematics Institute (MMI), a week-long summer course for secondary school mathematics teachers. The MMI will consist of presentations and discussions that are designed to be stimulating, accessible and useful for teaching.

Basic information:

  • Dates: Monday, June 18 through Friday, June 22, 2012 (tentative, may change if public school years are extended) 
  • Times: 8am-6pm
  • Location: Physics 1201 on the College Park campus of UMD 
  • Credits: 2 continuing professional development (CPD) credits, MSDE-certified 
  • Also provided without charge: the credit-certificate fee, the price of the Geometer's Sketchpad and Fathom software packages for participants who do not have them.
  • Contact: Professor Denny Gulick ( 301 405 5157)
  • TO REGISTER FOR THE MMI: Mail in the registration form (click HERE for the form and address). 
    Around May 1, we expect to review applications for the MMI and select the 2012 MMI class, primarily on the basis of order of receipt of application, courses being taught, and diversity of participation by school and county.

Presentations

Dr. M. Michael Boyle: Struggles of the Past: How New types of Numbers Emerged Historically
Presentation: History of Numbers (pdf)

Dr. Denny Gulick: Encounters with Chaos
Presentation: Chaos (pdf)

Dr. Frances Gulick: Explorations with Geometer's Sketchpad

Dr. Frances Gulick: Exploring Statistics with Fathom

Dr. John Millson: The Space of Polygons in the Plane
Presentation: Moduli Spaces of Planar n-gon Linkages (pdf)

Dr. Lawrence Washington: Introduction to Cryptography, or How to Share
Presentations: Cannonballs(pdf), Secret Codes(pdf)

Dr. Justin Wyss-Gallifent: Tile Games and the Underlying Mathematics
Presentation: Sliding (pdf)

There will also be discussions on in-school topics of interest to teachers.

We intend to get the software packages Geometer's Sketchpad and Fathom onto the personal computers of teachers who do not have the software, for effective hands-on instruction at the MMI and use in the future. 

Prerequisites

The segments will be most useful for teachers with a basic foundation in algebra, and in some cases as indicated by the title geometry or probability/statistics. 

We also offer 5-week summer courses for high school teachers , beginning the week after the MMI, which are more appropriate for training in the basic foundations. In Summer 2012, we aim to offer MATH 484 (Geometry for High School Teachers) and MATH486 (Calculus for High School Teachers), provided there is sufficient interest (typically about 10 students are needed).

Our Vision for the Maryland Mathematics Institute

The Mathematics Department envisions the MMI as an annual one-week, two-credit summer course featuring several College Park faculty. The aim is to provide high school mathematics teachers with interesting and enjoyable mathematics relevant to teaching high school students, and to communicate to the teachers the pleasure and relevance of mathematics. The topics entailed in the MMI will go beyond the standard courses preparatory for teaching high school mathematics. The Department also aims to build communication between College Park faculty (primarily from the Mathematics Department but also from Mathematics Education) and high school teachers, and to provide high school mathematics teachers a setting to learn from each other and enhance their own community.