Keynote Speakers

Lyn English, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Title of Keynote: Learning Innovation in STEM Education
Abstract: STEM education, including aspects of computational thinking and mathematics learning, will be addressed in this keynote. Consideration will be given to different perspectives on and approaches to STEM education, how incorporating learning affordances within STEM experiences can foster learning innovation, and how such learning can be achieved through integrated STEM activities. An example of a multi-component “modelling with design” activity featuring learning affordances will be presented. The activity incorporates mathematical modelling, engineering design processes, data handling, material science, and systems thinking. The talk will conclude with some issues for consideration about the future of STEM and STEM for the future, including the nature and role of computational thinking.

Michelle Wilkerson, University of California Berkeley
Dr. Wilkerson is Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Education at University of California Berkeley. Her work explores how youth learn with and about scientific computing tools such as simulations, data visualizations, and modeling environments. Dr. Wilkerson leads the Computational Representations in Education (CoRE) research group at Berkeley.

Title of Keynote: Computational Integration to Support Expression, Refinement, and Collective Knowledge in Classroom Communities
Abstract: There are a number of motivations to integrate computation into mathematics education. Some are practical–a proliferation of computing and digital technologies across professional disciplines and everyday life requires students to develop computational literacy early, and throughout the curriculum. Others are epistemic–computation, it is argued, provides students with new ways to express their ideas and experiences, and connect those to formal concepts in the discipline. It offers tools for students to "debug" their misunderstandings, to restructure and elaborate what they know. And, it provides ways for communities of students to access, organize, build upon, and extend one another's ideas and work. This epistemic potential–the hope that computation can support students in sharing, refining, and building knowledge together–is encouraging, but backgrounded in many conversations about curricular integration and still unrealized in most K-12 classrooms.

In this talk, I will describe ongoing design-based research projects that focus on developing tools and curricular structures designed to bring together and support classroom communities as they build knowledge together through expression, refinement, and collective progress. The DataSketch project is developing tools and materials that encourage middle school students to explore and create their own computational visualizations and analyses of large, complex data sets related to familiar and socially relevant phenomena. The CodeR4STATS project has been exploring the use of the RStudio statistical computing environment in a model-based statistics curriculum. For both projects, I will describe ongoing research and emerging findings that highlight the roles that computation can play in classroom knowledge construction, as well as the tensions and tradeoffs involved in doing so.

Proposed Themes for Working Groups

The following themes will serve as a starting point for discussions. From our experience, they may certainly evolve to various directions.

1.      The integration of computational thinking and mathematics teaching and learning in preschool to undergraduate, and teacher education settings.

2.      Research-based understandings of the interplay between the affordances of computational thinking and mathematics.

3.      Practice-based understandings (and theorizing about these understandings) of the nature of exemplary tasks, pedagogical models, instructional materials and resources, and assessment practices.

Program Schedule

Friday 13 October 2017 UOIT/Fields/SSHRC Maker Day for Teachers
·         8:30am Registration in the Faculty of Education building
·         9:00am-4:00pm (TBA)
·         4:00pm End

Friday 13 October 2017 Symposium
·         6 pm - Registration in the Faculty of Education building
·         7 pm - Keynote Speaker Lyn English (Australia) –  Open to public
·         9 pm - Reception

Saturday 14 October 2017
·         8:30 Registration in the Faculty of Education building & coffee
·         9-10 am – Introduction and formation of the working groups
·         10 am - 12 noon - Working groups work
·         12 noon – Lunch
·         1:00-3:00 pm - Working group work
·         3:00 – 4:00 pm - Poster/Project displays & coffee
·         4:00 pm – 5:30pm - Keynote Speaker Uri Wilensky (USA)– Open to public

Sunday 15 October 2017
·         9-10 am – Initial working group reports and discussion
·         10-10:15am Coffee Break
·         10:15-12 am - Working groups work