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  • 1 year ago
The University of the West Indies St. Augustine Campus has hosted its 7th annual Mathematics Fair, in a bid to expose secondary school students to the different aspects of mathematics, including the importance of it in everyday life.


Alicia Boucher has the highlights.
Transcript
00:00An extraordinarily lively atmosphere at the U.E. St. Augustine campus.
00:10As students, over 3,000 of them from secondary schools around the country,
00:15turned up for the seventh installment of the math fair-themed MathQuest,
00:19a creative adventure of discovery hosted by the university.
00:24Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology, Professor Brian Coburn, says,
00:29Generating interest in mathematics is the goal as math sets the framework for all sciences.
00:36And while we aren't interested in turning everyone into a scientist,
00:39we want everyone to have math science competence.
00:44And this is part of what we want here.
00:47One of the great wins, for example,
00:50is that this exercise has stimulated the creation of math clubs in schools.
00:56So that's exactly what we want.
00:58Professor Coburn stresses the importance of math to life in general.
01:02While concerns are being raised at the primary and secondary school examination level,
01:07in terms of falling mathematics scores in the country and the Caribbean,
01:12he tells us the problem is a global one.
01:15But I can say that one of our initiatives is to reach out to secondary school teachers
01:21to promote different ways of teaching math
01:25and to get the subject included in more activity.
01:30We even have a big activity plan that I'm not yet at liberty to give you details,
01:36but the intent is to bring math, make it more tangible, more visceral.
01:44But amid a fast-advancing world, the question can be asked,
01:47what is responsible for that decline?
01:50Technology is making it a lot easier to access information,
01:55and I don't know that teaching and assessment is keeping pace with technology.
02:01So there is a challenge in that respect.
02:05Lecturer at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Dr. Akinator Ndaga,
02:09tells us the math fair was centered around game-based learning,
02:13such as puzzles, brain teasers, and mazes.
02:17We were able to have a very important aspect, which is the DMS Real Talks.
02:22We present to these students speakers,
02:25hopefully they find them inspirational, motivational, and informative
02:30about mathematics, careers in mathematics, ideas,
02:34maybe even teach us a topic that they're doing in the secondary school
02:38in a different way than they expected.
02:40Unipet has been a sponsor for the event,
02:42and this year, First Caribbean International Bank came on board.
02:46This was in part based on what CIBC's Associate Director of Digital Client Experience,
02:51Sarah Rudder Chulhan, says is a need for more financial literacy in the country.
02:56Apart from games, CIBC provided information to students on opening bank accounts
03:02and introduced them to its virtual reality artificial intelligence avatar, Tiffany.
03:08She basically has been trained on all public data in the bank
03:11to be able to respond and give you responses to questions.
03:15So one of the things we're looking at is trying to see what is the best use case for her.
03:19The math fair ran from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. with over 80 schools participating.
03:24Alicia Boucher, TV6 News.
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