Students flock to Maths Week website

Students flock to Maths Week website

Thursday, 13 August 2009, 3pm
Press Release Maths Week 2009

Tens of thousands of students and teachers from schools around New Zealand flocked online this week to have some fun with maths.

Alan Parris, President of the New Zealand Association of Maths Teachers (NZAMT) says, “Maths Week has proved itself again for the 10th year running as an exciting and interactive way for students to learn about Maths. Website traffic volume increased by more than 25% this year reaching over a million page impressions in its first three days”.

Maths Week is a website that runs for one week a year allowing students from of all ages to complete maths challenges such as The Amazing Maths Race, Maths Millionaire, and Survivor Series. Students can participate in class and at home, parents and teachers can also register and supervise younger students.

Alan Parris comments, “The challenge for us is to keep thinking of ways of making Maths fun and interesting for students. We have a lot more competition these days with the likes of Facebook and other social media websites competing for students’ attention.”

“It takes a good 8 months of preparation each year to create the content and prepare the website for just one week of intense activity! The website is made available for the rest of the year as a resource for schools and students.” Says Alan Parris

Support from teachers has been great with many teachers including Maths Week in their maths classes. The questions are written by Bill Ellwood, former HOD of Maths at Burnside High School, with a number of the games and activities also translated into Maori.

“In previous years we were able to attract sponsorship helping to offset the costs of running Maths Week, however tighter economic conditions this year has meant we had to fund it ourselves and we are very keen to hear from potential sponsors for next year.” says Alan Parris.

Maths Week can be found at www.mathsweek.org.nz.

NZAMT runs the Maths Week website free of charge each year. NZAMT is a non-profit organisation that acts as a resource and advocate for promoting mathematics in New Zealand.

ENDS

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