MMI - Summer 2010

Maryland Mathematics Institute -- Summer 2010

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 21 through Friday, June 25, 2010
  • Times: 8:30am- 3:30pm, lunch to be provided by the University
  • Location: Room TBA on the College Park campus of UMD
  • Credits: 2 continuing professional development (CPD) credits, MSDE-certified
  • SUPPORT STIPEND: $300 for full participation in the week's activity
  • Also provided without charge: the credit-certificate fee; lunch; parking; and 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 2010 MMI class, primarily on the basis of order of receipt of application, courses being taught, and diversity of participation by school and county.

Day and Half-Day Interactive Presentations by University of Maryland Faculty:

  • Dr. Daniel Chazan: An Historical Perspective on Negative Numbers
  • Dr. Denny Gulick: Introduction to Chaos, with Applications
  • Dr. Frances Gulick: Explorations with Geometer's Sketchpad
  • Dr. Frances Gulick: Exploring Statistics with Fathom
  • Dr. Leonid Koralov: Introduction to Probability with Applications
  • Dr. Larry Washington: Introduction to Cryptography, or How to Share Secrets
  • Dr. Justin Wyss-Gallifent: Tile Games and the Underlying Mathematics

For more detail on these presentations, click HERE .
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 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 2010, we aim to offer MATH483 (Algebra for School Teachers) and MATH 484 (Geometry for School Teachers).

Our vision for the Maryland Mathematics Insititute:

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.