科普資源整合：青少年跨領域數學影音與寫作競賽

According to several international investigation results, Taiwanese students have high average result ranking in mathematics. Contrarily, our students’ attitudes toward mathematics are negative. Many of them have low interests and confidences in math, and do not value mathematics. Students with such negative attitudes are less likely to major mathematics in college, and they may not realize how to apply mathematical knowledge into their profession or daily life. Even worse, some students decide to give up mathematics during K12 study. Recently, many professors are aware of this situation and develop the math activities that integrate with art, game, and cross-disciplinary elements. To name a few, Chair Professor Fou-Lai Lin has conducted the “JUST DO MATH” project that developed numerous groundbreaking activity modules. The Mathematical Society of the Republic of China (Taiwan) has collaborated with junior and senior high schools for the IMAGAINARY exhibition. The Numeracy Lab cofounded by me has also continuously published on-line articles to show the practicability and interesting aspects of mathematics. However, most math contests still focus on the mathematical knowledge and achievement. Few contests like International Mathematical Modeling Challenge emphasize the practicability. In this project, we propose to initiate a contest that encourages the students to discover/apply math in cross- disciplinary areas like daily life events, arts, and humanities. The contestants can submit either original articles or video clips to demonstrate their creativity and the understanding of mathematics. We split the junior high school and senior high school students as two groups. The contest is two-stage. After passing the first stage, contestants have to join the one-week workshop to elevate their capability of math, presentation, and the domain knowledge in other areas. We will provide subsidy to the winners and bring them to overseas like Germany and Japan to visit the math museum or research institute. The mission of this visiting group is to increase the students’ international experiences and to seek international collaboration for our contest. For those who cannot join such visiting group due to financial reason, they can bring the half amount of the subsidy as the winning prize. Last but not least, the video clips and articles submitted by the students are the best materials for mathematical communications and popular math. We will utilize them on the Internet, and collaborate with publisher to publish these articles.