ICT in Education

What a fantastic day! It was the National Final of the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge and Dr Challoner’s Grammar School from Buckinghamshire came third in the KS3 age range at the National Final of the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion 2007/8!!!!

Dr Challoner’s were one of 33 schools who attended the final. There were 11 primary, 11 KS3 and 11 KS4 teams who took part.

In the morning pupils prepared their cars and in the afternoon there was one race for all teams. The top team from each age range would be the winner wherever they finished in the race and the overall winner across all age ranges would of course be the team that finished in first place.

Dr Challoner’s Grammar were 25th on the grid of 33 schools (11 from each age range). As the race progressed they slowly climbed up the leader board and as they completed the final lap they had reached 12th position which gained them third place in the KS3 age range!

Full details of the day and finishing positions can be found on the Maths Challenge website.

Photos of the day can be seen on the same website here.

Congratulations, Dr Challoner’s Grammar School!

Tags: Cambridgeshire Software House, Cars Maths in Motion, CSH, ICT, Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge, maths

What a fantastic day! It was the National Final of the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge and Elangeni School from Buckinghamshire are the National Primary Winners!!

The day started for me with a 90 minute journey from home and up the M40 to the Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon. Pat Trowbridge also journeyed there – she is the link ICT Consultant for Elangeni and so was there to support her school. Schools arrived from 9.15 am and all were there and ready to go by 9.45 am.

There were introductions from Brian Richardson from Cambridgeshire Software House (CSH), who organises the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge and wrote the software along with Ian Whittington (who was also at the final) and then from a representative from Jaguar. After a few rules were mentioned (no calculators!) it was kicking-out time for all of the adults. We then had a couple of hours to wander around the motor museum whilst pupils worked away on their cars.

After a fabulous lunch we all gathered together again. There were some speeches and then there was the teachers race. Vicki, the teacher of the Elangeni pupils had bravely entered the race and, although she didn’t win, she successfully completed the race. Well done!

Finally it was the moment we’d all been waiting for, the race! Elangeni’s pupils had not felt confident when they came out before lunch, so we were all just hoping that they would manage to finish and not run out of fuel or crash. There is only one race in the final and all cars go into this. Each is clearly marked with the age range they are in – 1 for Primary, 2 for KS3 and 3 for KS4. The top team from each age range would be the winner wherever they finished in the race and the overall winner across all age ranges would of course be the team that finished in first place.

The race began… Elangeni were 22nd on the grid of 33 schools (11 from each age range). Although this doesn’t sound too good, they were the fourth placed primary school on the starting grid. The first few laps were dominated by KS3 and KS4 teams, which took the top 15 places (which is all the software displays). We could see from the text display though that Elangeni were jostling for position with other cars, overtaking some and giving way to others. After a few more laps a primary school appeared in 15th position. They then disappeared, then reappeared and continued this for a while. When we looked again, the primary that appeared in 15th position was Elangeni! Then to our amazement they didn’t disappear off the screen but instead climbed the positions! They then flitted between 4th and 6th place for several laps and in the meantime, only one other primary school made it into the top 15.

The final lap arrived and Elangeni hung on to their lead in the race against the other primaries. They were the National Primary Winners!! Overall they were 4th in the race – only 3 secondary teams did better than them. Conversely, Elangeni were better than 19 secondary teams and 10 primary teams! I must say that I did have a tear in my eye at that point!

Here are the finishing positions of the top 5 schools and where the second and third place primary schools came:

1st Longfield School, Darlington (KS4) 2h 19m 10s
2nd The Grove School, Nottinghamshire (KS4) 2h 19m 21s
3rd Weydon School, Surrey (KS3) 2h 19m 22s
4th Elangeni Primary School, Buckinghamshire (KS2) 2h 20m 21s
5th Chatham House Grammar School, Kent (KS4) 2h 20m 24s

15th Corpus Christi Catholic Primary School, Portsmouth (KS2) 2h 28m 13s
16th Meavy C.E. Primary School, Devon (KS2) 2h 31m 24s

So Elangeni were only 1m 11s behind the first place KS4 team and they were 7m 52s faster than the next placed primary team!!

Full details of the finishing positions (but not times) can be found on the Maths Challenge website.

The presentations followed and photos were taken. The top three schools in each age range received prizes. Elangeni’s prizes included and iDesk, Epson printer/scanner, Texas Instruments calculators, Pentax camera as well as book tokens, medals and Jaguar caps for the pupils.

Link to photos on the BucksGfL website

My congratulations go to Elangeni School, to Vicki who taught herself and then her class how to use the software, and of course to the pupils who did the hard work to get through the Buckinghamshire Knockout Round, the Buckinghamshire Final, the National Semi Final and then beat a total of 29 schools in the National Final to become the National Primary Champions for 2006-7 and overall the fourth best team across all age ranges. That’s no small feat considering that around 1000 schools took part in the Maths Challenge this year. To think they nearly didn’t make the final either – they got the 11th and last primary final place by just 0.69 seconds!!

I would also like to thank Brian & Wendy Richardson and their family for all of the work they put in to organise the final and run the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge each year. Without them none of this would happen.

So another year for the Maths Challenge is now over. It takes me some work in organising this in Buckinghamshire and at times I’ve been a little despondent when schools who have purchased the software have dropped out and so many other schools, especially the secondaries, just don’t seem interested in taking part. Today though has made it all worth it and gives me a renewed determination to run this again next year and to try and get more schools involved.

Who says maths is boring?! With Cars Maths in Motion it isn’t! So bring on the Maths Challenge 2007-8!!

Tags: Brian Richardson, Buckinghamshire, BucksGfL, Cambridgeshire Software House, Cars Maths in Motion, CSH, Ian Whittington, ICT, Jaguar, Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge, maths, Pat Trowbridge, primary

This morning I received an email from Cambridgeshire Software House – we have a Buckinghamshire school in the national final of the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge!!

Congratulations go to Elangeni School for being the first school in Buckinghamshire to achieve this. This is also the first year that they have taken part so they have done well to get through the Buckinghamshire knockout round and final, and now the national semi final. They will go on as one of the eleven primary schools to compete in the national final at the Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon on 29th June.

Needless to say I will be there, along with Pat Trowbridge, to cheer them on!

Tags: Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire Software House, Cars Maths in Motion, Jaguar, Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge, maths, Pat Trowbridge, primary

This afternoon was the Buckinghamshire Final for the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge 2006/7.

A month ago to this day was the knockout round which saw the top six primary schools gain their places in today’s final alongside the secondaries. The secondary schools did not have a knockout round as there were only four taking part, although two did participate for fun and to see how they matched up to the primaries. Unfortunately only two secondaries actually came to the final – the other two had not-very-good reasons for dropping out (well, one had a reasonable excuse although it sounded like not much had been done with the pupils on Cars anyway; as for the other secondary, well…)

The primary and secondary schools who did attend the final had a very enjoyable afternoon. It was great to see the children working on their cars using a range of mathematical skills including measuring angles, calculating percentages, working out scale lengths, making adjustments to the engine, the suspension, gear ratios, calculating the fuel required for the race, working out pit stops and tyre changes and much, much more. Best of all, they were actually enjoying it! Yes, children wanting to do maths and enjoying it!! It was a little harder for them too as there was a tight time limit to set up their cars from scratch (they had about 1 1/4 hours) and calculators were banned. The reason for the ban is because calculators are banned from the national final, so I thought this was a good opportunity to give them a taster of what may come. I was amazed at how well they all coped with this and also the speed of some of the teams in setting up their cars – a couple of the teams had finished everything in an hour.

At the end of the afternoon the race was run. Needless to say there was lots of cheering as they watched their cars battling for the lead, along with groans as some of the cars crashed out or ran out of fuel during the race.

After ten nail-biting minutes the winners were revealed. The primary winner was Elangeni School, who entered the competition for the first time this year. The KS3 winner was Gayhurst School, the only independent in Buckinghamshire to take part. Both schools received trophies which I had bought for the occasion. Each school and all pupils will be sent certificates next week as a little memento of the occasion.

Elangeni and Gayhurst now have a fortnight to work on another track setup for the national semi-final knockout round which is run by Cambridgeshire Software House (CSH). I shall be hoping and praying that at least one of these schools does well in this and gets through to the national final in June.

As with the knockout round, I videoed the final with CamStudio 2.0 so that the schools could watch the race with their pupils again and to share this with others in their class. I also screen captured the race report screen for them to see.

Final race video (14 MB zipped)

For me, the hard work on the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge is over for this year. However I’ve now got to start thinking about the 2007/8 challenge and how to get more schools involved. I’m hoping that word-of-mouth from this year’s primary schools will help me to get other primary schools on board. The secondaries are a different kettle of fish though – I don’t know whether it is apathy towards Cars, lack of knowledge or something else that is keeping them from joining in. What I do know is that there are real benefits to using Cars to support maths at KS3 and KS4 and these schools are missing out. Or rather the pupils are missing out, especially the ones who have participated in the Challenge in their primary schools and then don’t get the opportunity at their secondary schools. I just hope that they will make some noises towards their maths teachers about what they are missing out on as this might help to get the message across. We shall see…

Tags: Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire Software House, CamStudio, Cars Maths in Motion, CSH, Jaguar, Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge, mathematical, maths, primary

Today was the knockout round in Buckinghamshire for the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge 2006/7.

This is the second year that the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge has taken place in this county. In previous years our schools have not been able to participate because it was only open to City Learning Centres and the schools they supported. Last year the challenge was opened up to all schools, so I decided to get involved and persuade some Buckinghamshire schools to participate. As a Lead Centre I have organised how the challenge works in the county and kept schools informed throughout the year.

Cars Maths in Motion has been around since 1984 and started life on a BBC computer. It has gone through many iterations (and now works on a PC, of course!) and it continues to be developed each year by its creators, Brian Richardson and Ian Whittington. Brian and his wife Wendy are partners of Cambridgeshire Software House (CSH) which they formed in 1980 and Ian is their technical support. Note they term themselves as partners, which gives an indication of how down-to-earth they are (many others would give themselves grand titles such as managing director) and that they are in it not for the money but for the love of what they do, which is produce educationally relevant software that children and teachers love to use.

The Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge was set up several years ago as a way of engaging children of all ages in an exciting and motivating mathematics based project. It is sponsored by Jaguar, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and several other companies. Each year the Challenge has grown in size and now there are thousands of pupils in hundreds of schools that take part. The Challenge uses the Cars Maths in Motion software which is a simulation based on Formula 1 Grand Prix racing. Pupils work in teams to set up a racing car and to try to win a Grand Prix race. This involves a lot of maths – measuring angles, calculating percentages, working out scale lengths, making adjustments to the engine, the suspension, gear ratios, calculating the fuel required for the race, working out pit stops and tyre changes and much, much more. Schools compete in a knockout round by submitting their best team’s car to CSH. This is followed by a semi-final where a further car is submitted. Then in June of each year the 30-or-so schools finalists are invited by CSH to meet for a final race-off to find out the mational winners for primary, KS3 and KS4.

Last year we had 8 schools participate in Buckinghamshire. This year we have 15 schools participating. Now this may only be a small number out of the 240 schools in the county. However, I always planned on starting small with the hope that by word of mouth from those schools who have participated, the numbers will grow each year. So I am pleased that the numbers have nearly doubled for 2006-7 and hope to see even more taking part next year.

OK, moan time before I get on to this year’s knockout. Although I am pleased at the number who have participated this year, I am disappointed that 6 schools who started in the autumn term have dropped out. Most of these have not bothered to give a reason as to why they have dropped out (and most didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me they weren’t going to put in an entry to the knockout round, so this morning was wasted phoning these schools to find out what was happening). Three of these schools did exactly the same last year. One of these schools was, under the guidance of a different teacher, last year’s Buckinghamshire primary winner. It’s such a shame that the children in these schools have missed out on something which would be both beneficial to their mathematical development and a whole lot of fun too.

Anyway, back to this year’s knockout round. This event was for the primary schools to whittle them down to the top six for the final. As there aren’t enough secondary schools participating, they are all already through to the final. A couple sent in their cars to participate in the knockout for fun only and to see how they compared with the primary schools.

Once all of the cars were in, the race was run. I videoed this with CamStudio 2.0 so that the schools could watch the race with their pupils and see how they got on, which I think is so much nicer than just being told the results. I also screen captured the race report screen for them to see.

Race video (23 MB zipped)

Now I need to let the schools know who is through to the final on 26th April. If last year is anything to go by, this will be a great day as the children get so fired up and excited about it. Now who’d have thought that you could say that about children doing maths…?!!

Tags: Brian Richardson, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire Software House, CamStudio, Cars Maths in Motion, CSH, Formula 1, Grand Prix, Ian Whittington, Jaguar, Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge, mathematical, maths, Specialist Schools and Academies Trust