OAME 2015 Leadership - A Recap

Presidential Address from Tim

So OAME Leadership is over for another year and I was lucky enough to get funding to attend this year. I need to say a big thank you to OAME President Tim Sibbald (@TimSibbald) for his vision in organizing the conference. The theme of his term is connectivity and this was the common thread that tied the excellent sessions offered throughout the weekend.








Thursday kicked off with Ralph Connelly. Ralph provided a historical perspective to the leadership conference and how it has been on the forefront of math education changes since the first conference in 1974. The evening finished off with some much needed mathematical thinking courtesy of Ian VanderBurgh. Here are the two problems that Ian shared with the group. The first is a great one to do with your class.

Friday was jam packed and started off with University of Windsor professor Dragana Martinovic. Dragana challenged us to consider how we model leadership by reviewing some of the work she has done in collaborative inquiry models. The afternoon consisted of a presentation from Queens University math educator Lynda Colgan. Lynda provided a great overview of the impact parents have on the learning of their children. Check out this parent involvement quiz that served as a minds on for her session. Lynda also shared a recently released resource produced by the Council of Ontario Directors of Education. The resource is a parent tool kit that can serve as a plan for hosting a parent math night. It includes research-based information that can help parents support their child's math education. The toolkit includes resources, support materials and videos in five modules for Grades K-8. A secondary toolkit is in the works. I am hoping to use the Grade 8 module to host a parent math night at my school for the incoming Gr. 9 class.

The fun continued on Friday evening with an author night. Participants were treated to presentations from authors that have written books with a mathematical slant. The authors were:

• Richard Hoshino "The Math Olympian" (Check out Richard's website for lots of great stuff related to the book.) I first met Richard at a University of Waterloo summer workshop. I still use some of his activities in my teaching including one of my favourites "The Game of Frogs"
•  Siobhan Roberts "Genius at Play - The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway". If you haven't heard of Conway, he is a bit of a character. I would highly recommend some of the Numberphile videos that feature Conway. In particular the one on his inventing of the game of life. Siobhan has also written a book on Donald Coxeter called the "King of Infinite Space". Check out her website for more info.

• Ed Barbeau also presented some of his books of problems. If you want a great supply of problems from Ed, check out his webpage. 

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the end of the conference on Saturday. Particularly disappointing since Ian VanderBurgh was closing the conference with some more mathematical mayhem courtesy of his many mathematical conundrums. 

Thanks to Tim again for his vision in putting together a great program. I think the measure of a conference is always how quickly I take back what I saw in a workshop or session. And it didn't take long for me to share the many problems I enjoyed tackling and the resources that I collected over the three days. Now I have some books to read.