“Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the Universe.”
With this quote from Galileo Galilei, we would like to emphasize the importance of Mathematical principles and concepts, which have become a part of almost every area of work.
However, many students have problems acquiring Mathematics skills. Learning difficulties in Mathematics is one of the causes of the school failure, and sometimes can even cause the early school leaving.
Analyzing the causes of that situation we find two significant reasons: the lack of attractiveness of the subject, and that students do not find a correlation between the subject and the real life. This project seeks to offer to teachers measures to combat these problems.
On the other hand, nowadays visual thinking becomes more important. According to the United States Department of Labor, a mere 10 percent of information is retained when presented only orally and only 35 percent of information is retained when presented only visually. But when audio and visual tools are combined to present a message or idea, 65 percent of that information is retained.
In addition, watching films is one of the favourite hobbies of young people. Educational community should learn to use it, as well as other audiovisual medias, ICT, social networks... in order to adapt their methodology to the changing times.
In view of this situation our project “Cinemaths Paradise” arises. We think that we can take advantage of cinema to use it in our educational functions. This way we would address the following objectives:
OBJECTIVE 1: “Make the students conscious of the presence of Mathematics in real life”
We will use cinema as a mirror of real life, this way we will use scenes from different movies to show how Maths are integrated in our own lives. Besides, we will work on how Maths are used in the creation of movies.
OBJECTIVE 2: “Enhance motivation of our students in Mathematics learning”.
We intend to encourage our students by using new technologies as cinema in the classroom.
OBJECTIVE 3: “Provide educational techniques that enable an effective use of movies in Maths classes”
Cinema is used as an educational tool at school in different subjects but rarely in Maths, so it is needed a methodology to enable teachers to integrate movies in the curricula. Thanks to this project, we will develop techniques to select movies, to search Maths content in them and to prepare activities based on them and linked to the curricula. Besides we will create a bank of activities and teaching resources based on the movies that we will use which will be available to the educational community.
OBJECTIVE 4: “Promote European Culture through the seventh Art: the cinema”
The project should improve the perception that our students have of their national and European cinema.
OBJECTIVE 5: “Improve the English skills of our students”
Through cooperative learning with students from other nationalities, our students will acquire better skills in English language.
OBJECTIVE 6: “Give the students a feeling of being a European citizens.
Many films from our respective countries have been translated and are well known in all European countries. Our young people will have to learn to cooperate with people from other countries, with different nationalities, traditions, values and ways of doing things. We want to teach our students to be open-minded and give them the most optimal possibilities to achieve cooperative skills and innovative abilities.
To make teaching materials together with students and teachers from other European countries will be challenging for all and give the students a feeling of being a European citizen.
