University of Namibia Mathematics Summer School

I am writing this post just after two extraordinary weeks in Namibia. This is a quick personal reflection of what has been an awesome experience. As part of Cardiff University’s Phoenix Project, Martin Mugochi, Rob Wilson and I with Cardiff PhD students Geraint Palmer and Alex MacKay worked with the University of Namibia’s faculty of Mathematics to deliver a two week summer school.

The goal of this joint effort with the University of Namibia was to provide a positive experience of mathematics. As Rob said:

We want them to concentrate on what they can do rather than what they cannot do.

The first week involved inquiry based sessions on both mathematical topics (such as Algebra and Geometry) as well as wider skills (such as presenting and reading mathematics).

This side of the course mainly involved students working on through activities and presenting them to the class which lead to discussion (and in an IBL way ultimately confirmation/verification of the conclusions). This is the point at which we (I’m sure Rob, Alex and Geraint would agree) must say that the students were awesome. Eager to learn, open to the novel pedagogic ideas, a real pleasure to work with.

Here are some photos of the first week (the only local ones as I write this are from the group Alex and I took but things were pretty much the same in Rob and Geraint’s group):

The second week had students work in groups on a variety of projects such as:

• Mathematical paradoxes,
• Patterns in Pascal’s triangle,
• History of mathematics

From the intensity of the first week, this lead to a stark contrast in which students came to us for support. This lead to us not being in direct contact with all the students all the time.

The culmination of the whole school was a 2 hour closing ceremony in which students presented their posters. As we hadn’t seen all the groups we were slightly worried that this might fall flat on it’s face but we were very wrong and it was such a delight to see each and every group turn up to put their awesome poster on the wall.

Here are some of the posters:

Without any nudge on our part students starting walking around and learning from each other’s poster (I am still smiling about this now). This was followed by students giving 5 minute presentations, closing remarks from various UNAM officials, Martin Mugochi (head of the mathematics department) and ourselves.

One of my most pleasant memories (of which there are too many to mention) is what happened just after that though, we (students and us) came together to thank each other for our efforts and get photos:

This was such a great experience, it was fantastic to work and become good friends with Martin, get to know the students (seeing the benefits of active pedagogic methodologies) and spend two great weeks with Geraint, Alex and Rob:

This is just one of many Phoenix project projects and it’s great to be involved.

Now I need to put this laptop down, get a good night’s sleep and spend tomorrow working on final details for PyCon Namibia.