[NFBCS] Eduvis: Preliminary Announcement of Organisation Content

[Nathaniel Schmidt]

Hi all,

 

Since the organisation's founder has started promoting initial material, I
thought I would put this on one or two lists since I don't think it has been
mentioned here yet.

 

Charlie Roberts, a Mathematics and Physical Education teacher and visiting
teacher for students with vision impairment from Melbourne, Australia,
founded an organisation in 2019 called Eduvis.  It aims to promote inclusive
and accessible strategies, particularly for VI students, as well as teachers
and parents / guardians of those students, who wish to independently take up
studies in fields of numeracy, especially if the student is undertaking
secondary education and / or thinking of taking up studies in mathematics at
a tertiary level.  It is hoped that such an organisation may help to foster
an environment that increases the current number of students studying
independently, whether that means that more students take up maths as a
subject, or that existing maths students transfer their studies from
intervention through human aids to a more autonomous form and level of
study.

 

This organisation may be useful to any teacher or student in general but
will be specifically relevant to students who require the use of Computer
Algebra system (CAS) calculators, as mandated for yr. 10, 11 and 12
secondary school students by the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority
(VCAA) in Australia.

 

There are a number of theoretical and practical solutions that either are
available, or will be available, through this organisation.  Among these
include (but will not necessarily be limited to) the following:

*	Funding has already been provided for students wishing to purchase
hardware CAS calculators for educational use.
*	Research is intended to be conducted, exploring the possibility of
developing a software CAS calculator with an intuitive and accessible
graphical user interface (GUI) that is cross-platform and easy to use.
Currently, many stand-alone software calculators do not have very accessible
graphical interfaces and only specific mainstream calculators are approved
by some educational authorities.  There are some online solutions that are
somewhat accessible but it can often be difficult to obtain approval from
the same authorities to offer their backing for (and endorsement of) these
cloud-based solutions.
*	In the meantime, material is being developed to help current and
forthcoming secondary students to consider and explore options currently
available when it comes to existing software calculators.  Of particular
note is the free and open-source Maxima CAS calculator; however, like many
other solutions, it requires the VI student to use a text-based console /
terminal environment, which is okay if one is sufficiently technologically
literate but not everyone fits this category.

There is currently a partially-developed textual transcript which will
eventually have accompanying videos, explaining, comparing and contrasting
the pros and cons of some of these software CAS calculators and will
demonstrate their functionality.  This may be helpful for students, some of
whom may not be as capable of doing their own homework and finding their own
solutions as some others.

 

The content can be viewed at the organisation's website - mainly at
eduvis.com.au/projects <https://eduvis.com.au/projects/> .  Also, the South
Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment is promoting a Facebook group
fostering discussion of mathematics educational strategies for VI students,
which can also be found on the Eduvis website, under the "Links" section.

 

Contact information for the organisation members (Dr. Kyle Keane of MIT,
Charlie Roberts and myself) is also available on the website.

 

Regards,

 

Nathaniel

 

========================================

Nathaniel Schmidt

Undergraduate student

Bachelor of Computer Science (S306)

School of Information Technology

Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment

Deakin University, Melbourne (Burwood) campus

https://sync.deakin.edu.au/profiles/student/njschmidt/

 

E: njschmidt at deakin.edu.au <mailto:njschmidt at deakin.edu.au> 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/njsch/

GitHub: https://github.com/njsch/

Skype: nathaniel_schmidt1994

about.me/njschmidt/ <https://about.me/njschmidt/>