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	up - home Math Syndrome Study of Self-efficacy Women and the Internet Internet Reality PC Science Course TV Training		We believe that the Internet should not be considered as an end in itself, rather it should be an important and useful means to help people communicate with each other and find information for entertainment, personal interests, and research in a quick and user-friendly way. Therefore, after providing our students with the basic knowledge of how to use a computer and surf the Internet, we prefer to focus on finding useful and interesting ways to make the most of these tools, always within the framework of the cultural project of our Institute. PROJECT - A CHALLENGE: CAN THE INTERNET HELP PEOPLE OVERCOME THE SO-CALLED MATH SYNDROME? (A COURSE IN TWO PARTS) Giuliano Testa Many of us remember suffering from math anxiety when they were at school. My long teaching experience in the secondary school has always focused on this problem: how to make math enjoyable despite its abstraction and the technicalities. That is why my present course at the Rezzara Institute for the Third Age has the title: Enjoying Math The course consists of eight sessions attended by about 30 senior students and it will continue with the real challenge: CAN THE INTERNET HELP PEOPLE OVERCOME THE SO-CALLED MATH SYNDROME? In planning this course I had to remember that: 1) The so-called math syndrome is worldwide and is reinforced by school bad experiences 2) Third Age people in particular have lost quickness of wit necessary to math.  How to solve these problems? 1) Using a simple, clear language. 2) Choosing meaningful topics, (such as Numbers and curves, links between math and literature, The conics and their names, All that you wanted to know about Pythagoras theorem and never had the courage to ask). As with young people, also with adults it is important to remember: LOGICAL SIMPLICITY DOES NOT MEAN TEACHING SIMPLICITY. That is to say what appears to be simple to a teacher, it is not so simple for a student. Moreover, with math, one has to enter a new dimension, which is so far from everyday experience, that is to say the so-called scientific mentality really implies a change in the way of thinking. Last but not least our students all come from different educational and working backgrounds, which had to be taken into account. In order to harmonize them, I tackled math concepts from a historical perspective using a lot of slides, pictures, and text extracts. I have drawn from my former experience of teaching math from a historical perspective and followed an experience I carried out at secondary school in 1999-2000 when a group of students were involved in the creation of web pages of scientific contents: Discovering Science surfing on the net. This work is available on two floppy disks and includes articles published in Italian teaching magazines (if you are interested we can provide abstracts in English). The aims of the experience were, and should be the same for the new project: - Guide students to research and use the websites of science with awareness - Help students develop a critical reading of text extracts - Accustom students to read historical documents in the original version avoiding inaccurate mediation - Promote cooperative learning In the web page created by the young students you will see the different levels of competence reached by the students: some only described things, others were able to integrate the Internet information with their own readings, producing a personal detailed and well-presented commentary with a good choice of images, colors, fonts, and creation of links. Let´s go back to my present experience and to the course I have planned for next year. The problems I have already taken into consideration are: - the language: besides many good Italian sites there are many foreign sites - the adults´ relationship with the computer still appears to be difficult - Internet information is fragmentary and therefore difficult to be sorted out by inexperienced learners without the teacher's guide - Internet massive use must not induce a passive attitude in the students. However, using a multimedia approach can offer useful resources and a variety of possibilities, which would be impossible to find in ordinary books: I am thinking of animation in Java so useful in math and especially thought for the Internet. (Java is an object-oriented language: its applications (applets) offer graphics, sounds, animations in an interactive way of the user.) In conclusion I will follow these guidelines : -Reduction of anxiety caused by math -Revision of former math concepts and skills -Progressive approach to abstraction -Links between math and literature -Massive usage of pictures and figures -Factfiles of history of math -Proofs -Selecting and integrating Internet information. The present course enjoying math is a preparatory course because we are ploughing our way through the main problem of math with a view of producing a multimedial course including the Internet. SOME SUGGESTED WEBSITES MACCHINE MATEMATICHE http://www.museo.unimo.it/theatrum/inizio.htm OLTRE IL COMPASSO http://www.sns.it/html/OltreIlCompasso/Mostra-Matematica/home.html THE JOY OF PI http://www.joyofpi.com/ THE MAC TUTOR HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS ARCHIVE http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/ ARCHIMEDES http://www.mcs.drexel.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/contents.html 4000 YEARS OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/4000WS.html IMAGES OF MATHEMTICIANS ON POSTAGE STAMPS http://jeff560.tripod.com/ CHAOS, FRACTALS, AND ARCADIA http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS/arcadia/index.html