Event Legend

2008 Newsletter No. 2

Hi Everyone, I hope you’ve all had a smooth start to the year. It looks like this year is going to be a fairly busy one again for all of us with the introduction of the National Assessment Plan for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, the new senior school courses starting next year, the introduction of Computer Algebraic System technology for many of our current Year 10 students when they complete school and that’s just the tip of the iceberg really.

I am constantly amazed at teachers’ abilities when it comes to absorbing and accommodating change at such a rapid rate, but I do have to ask what the cost is for us all in terms of our personal relationships. I am very pleased that we have such a strong support network through MAWA, as facing these issues is so much easier when the workload is shared, particularly when we have so many members who are always willing to offer support and advice and share their considerable expertise.

I’d like to welcome our new members as we have had quite a few graduate teachers join our membership ranks – I’m sure you’ll find that MAWA is a very supportive network to be part of and I definitely encourage you to join both the MAWA listserv and the AAMT listserv to join in professional discussion on a range of issues. It’s good to see a bit of recent activity on the MAWA listserv on CAS calculators.

Noemi Reynolds (our VP) and I attended the AAMT Committee meeting over January which was very interesting. AAMT is planning a number of position papers on a variety of issues so I encourage you all to check the AAMT website to contribute to this. We also have a very hard working committee planning the 2009 AAMT Conference which is going to be held in Fremantle on 13-17 July (next year) so please put these dates in your diary as it is looking like it is going to be fantastic.

I attended the MAV Conference late last year and there was considerable interest in MAWA publications and particularly our fantastic Have Sum Fun Online competition. MAV has huge numbers of attendees, but I have to say that our local offerings stack up very well and Western Australian presenters have a very good reputation, particularly for our progress with Working Mathematically. Planning for our PD offerings this year is also well underway, with Primary Convention and State Conference shaping up to be terrific events.

Both are well worth attending for the range of top quality professional learning that will be on offer. The added bonus is that they should meet WACOT's requirements for PD as well.

I look forward to seeing you all at one of our upcoming events and hope that together we can ensure that we meet the challenges this year is going to present in a positive and mutually supportive way.

All the best for the year.

Cheers

Michelle Östberg,
President

CensusAtSchool

CensusAtSchool is a FREE Internet based data collection and analysis project. Students from years 5 to 12 collect real data about themselves by completing the CensusAtSchool online questionnaire. Teachers and students are then able to access the questionnaire response data and use it as a classroom resource to explore and investigate any number of topics.
Email: censusatschool@abs.gov.au
Web: www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/cashome.nsf/Home/Home

International Statistical Literacy Competition

Students from age 10 to 18 from around the world have begun entering the International Statistical Literacy Competition, which is again being coordinated by the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) of the International Association for Statistics Education (IASE).

Entry is free, but students must be registered by a teacher. Already there are entries from South Africa, Portugal, Italy, China, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, Spain, Mexico, Chile, USA, Colombia, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nigeria and Russia.

The main aim of this project is to encourage students to both understand and enjoy statistical data analysis and show them how statistics is an indispensable tool for understanding the world. Another aim is to encourage teachers to discover the statistical literacy resources that exist in their country. Further information (and pictures from the 2007 competition) is available from the web site:

www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/competition

Download the complete Newsletter
2008 Newsletter No. 2 (124kb)