Saturday pm

So we made it to Lagganlia in one piece after a rather hairy drive in the snow in a rather slippy people carrier.  Turns out I chose the right road avoiding the actual bridge at Feshie and hence, the very icy corner just before the centre.

My first observation of the course and the pupils is that, despite the good craic and normal appearances everyone here is more knowledgable and enthusiastic about maths than me.  It’s not that I’m not passionate about the subject but I’m always more pleased by the sense of achievement at completing a problem than talking about it.

So I’m a little out of my depth in the snow before I arrive and intellectually when I get here.

The first night passed in the only manner a room full of teachers could manage – we put the curriculum to rights.  No doubt we will have a solution to implementing curriculum for excellence before the weekend is over.

Our guest speakers have been fascinating – I failed to realise the potential and indeed, the necessity of maths behind the Typhoon – having visited Selex in Edinburgh several years ago I thoroughly appreciated the engineering input today. 

Prof  Miles Padgett from Glasgow University spoke to us about waves and posed very interesting problems in physics and philosophy – my head will never accept waves as a physical phenomena and I found his talk all the more amazing for this.  My intelligence was being seriously assaulted by now – cue Prof Adam McBride – mathematician extrordinaire from University of Strathclyde.  Adam offered up some of the most curious maths – fantastic number facts and challenges which everyone could take part in and puzzle over.

Sunday pm

Our last speaker was Heather Reid, the BBC weather forecaster.  Her story brought a little glamour to the weekend and something new to the pot for me.  The combination of chaotic data, technology and human interpreation make me nervous.  The sheer volume of possible outcomes is too much for my binary driven output valve.  Takes a much braver person than me to predict the weather.

In addition we did manage to consider the maths and physics of friction, aerodynamics and gravity whilst flying down the ski slope in the back garden today.  It was surprisingly difficult to get air on that last jump.

I feel inspired by the people I was fortunate enough to spend time with this weekend.  Enthused and ready to face pupils with new ideas and a renewed positivity.   I’m not sure how to measure the value of the learning experience for the pupils who attended.  Smiles all weekend and yawns all the way home are good indicators but I feel the real value will be realised some way down the line when these students are making choices for life.

A great weekend overall and my lasting impressions - choose maths when you understand the influence it has on everything and never never use trios while skiing!