Raising next generation problem solvers NRICH

it was fantastic just to see the numbers of families and schools that were using our resources during the peak of lockdown there were over million page views of enrich resources each week my name is dr rams lord and i'm the head of the enrich project which is maths outreach project in fact one of the biggest maths outreach projects in the world and we're based here right at the university of cambridge so enrich came about because children love solving problems and when the internet was available what better than to let them solve their solutions online so the faculty of education here at the university set up enrich and around the same time the faculty of mathematics was looking to mark the new millennium and set up the millennium maths project to communicate the mathematics it was doing to the general public so it made sense bringing rich and mnp together and we've gone from strength to strength ever since so my name is mark dawes i'm maths teacher here at combatant village college over the last 25 years that i've been in teaching education has changed hugely but enrich has had role throughout that as as teacher don't have time every week to sit down with colleagues to devise new problems so there are teacher notes to support the teacher there are training courses to support teachers there are live problems for pupils to work on knowing that their answers their solutions might appear on the website in future knowing that they are high quality materials that have been thought about incredibly carefully and thoroughly knowing that they've been trialled the the the whole package in terms of supporting teachers with problem solving and using problem solving in the classroom is just perfect it's really important that children leave school able to solve problems unfamiliar problems because that's what happens with everyday life whether you want to lay the patio sort out the family budget it needs the using and applying of math skills so we have school curriculum which looks at fluency reasoning and problem solving and they're all really important but even ofsted the school inspectors admit that the problem solving gets overlooked but we know from research worldwide research that what we need for the future are children who can solve unfamiliar problems and work together the faculty of mathematics at the university of cambridge is of course involved in world-class research and world-class education at all levels of the coming generations but it is also community of people who really love mathematics and so the activities of organization of enrich and mmp allow us to share that love and enthusiasm for mathematics for younger generations even younger than the ones we educate ourselves and also the broader society because mathematics is everywhere and mathematics is beautiful and it's so important to communicate that to all generations enrich has been impressive for long time because it's been very direct connection from maths faculty and people designing amazing resources for use in the school curriculum over the last couple of years it's been particularly valuable because people have been trying to use the resources from home particularly in their early lockdown one lot of organizations were trying to spin up content to be used online enrich was already there this is what they've done brilliantly for years and it was there for students and their families and anyone to make use of what's really key is having an understanding of the difference between doing maths to pass an exam and being mathematician and thinking mathematically and what we need are people doing the latter the future world as we face the challenges of climate change as we face the challenge of of biodiversity loss all these things are ways that you solve problems that allow us to have sustainable and healthy society and also how as data becomes more important as the internet becomes more important we have to understand mathematically how to cope with those data things like artificial intelligence and enrich is the way that is going to share to the whole community how to understand and think like mathematician you