What do Latin, Japanese and numeracy have in common? Well, nearly two years ago the Government announced a competition to develop and trial materials using ICT to deliver these subjects.

RM won the contract to develop Year 7 numeracy materials as part of the then National Numeracy Strategy. After an extensive pilot phase with 20 schools, RM has announced that the existing materials are available to “early adopters” now, with a full service online early in 2002. The fully-fledged service is called MathsAlive!. The full key stage 3 package will be ready for autumn 2002.

The pilot schools were given an interactive whiteboard and three PCs, and the teachers had a laptop to enable them to prepare and plan at home. This was accompanied by a full programme of training. Contributors to the materials included well-respected names from mathematics education such as Professor Afzal Ahmed, Adrian Oldknow and Professor Ruth Mertens. Evaluations have been carried out by Don Passey of Lancaster University and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta).

The materials have been written to provide not only resources for the classroom but also tools to help teachers use them. These tools include an online management system and assessment tools. Much of the content is designed to be delivered via an interactive whiteboard, but graphic calculators and paper-based resources like worksheets are also included.

An interesting aspect of the project has been the blend of PC-based and handheld technology, where the teacher is equipped with a TI graphic calculator and OHP screen, together with a Ranger motion detector. The activities follow the objectives of the new Framework for Teaching Mathematics and are organised into units. These are subdivided into lessons. Teachers can use these lessons off the peg, or they can devise their own using activities drawn from several different units.

When starting a lesson, the software provides a list of the objectives on the screen. These are tagged to the activities, so if you have changed the activities from the default set, the objectives are automatically changed as well. Teacher notes give details of the objectives to be covered, how to use the software and a teaching script with suggested questions. Another welcome feature is the inclusion of short video programmes which give an overview of the content of the unit and explain why it is useful to study it.

The content includes material written for Easiteach, Geometer’s Sketchpad and TI Interactive, as well as specially written programs. A good example of the power of the interactive whiteboard is the activity “Bottle Filling”. Presented with bottles of varying cross-section being filled at a constant rate, what will the graph of the volume being filled look like? Students can draw the graph on the whiteboard and then see how their graph compares with the actual result. The act of drawing, dragging and so on at the whiteboard seems to add some of the kinaesthetic activity which should be included in all good teaching. Another activity, Codebreaker, involves identifying functions in order to solve a code and receive further clues as to the journey to take. This is a fun activity which also makes good use of the interactive whiteboard. The evaluation of the project indicates that students recognise the ways in which the resources were helping them, including the variety of sensory inputs involved. They also report that they have more interest in maths and discuss it more - “I don’t dread the word maths any more”. Teachers felt all their planning was worthwhile because the lessons were so rewarding.

The project seems to have succeeded in its aim of using ICT to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics. One of the authors says: “It’s got to be the most exciting thing that’s happened in key stage 3 in my more than 30 years of toil”. The cost and the need for whiteboards will limit its attractiveness at first, but as further materials are added, MathsAlive! will surely become a serious contender for adoption by schools.

MathsAlive! service costs an average of pound;4.40 per pupil per year. Schools joining now get an extended subscription until Easter 2003. Tel: RM on 0870 908 6700www.rm.com