Developing Applied Mathematics Assignments Related To Covid 19

There is a handful of middle school mathematics teachers in Israel and abroad that already developed learning assignments using the context of the Corona pandemic. They created growth scenarios by devising formulas that take into consideration multiple variables, calculated effective social distancing measures according to known characteristics of the virus, and used algorithms to mine the global and local datasets in order to identify correlations.

The Davidson Institute of Science Education at the Weizmann Institute of Science is ideally positioned to aggregate and develop such assignments for the benefit of Israeli teachers. The Weizmann Institute’s scientists are now working in their labs day and night to find innovative solutions for the virus. As the pandemic started to spread, the Davidson Institute has already began to capture some of the scientists’ new findings and made them available to teachers and students.

Now, the Davidson Institute is proposing to set up a special educational website, which will incorporate 20 applied mathematics assignments for middle school students, using relevant and authentic cases that come out of the current pandemic. They plan to issue a call for proposals from mathematics teachers in Israel and abroad, and ask them to contribute their assignments. They will also work with the Weizmann Institute’s scientists and their education experts to develop additional learning tasks.

Then, Davidson will conduct 12 online workshops for 450 middle school mathematics teachers, who teach the high ability groups and who are interested to use these assignments in their online teaching. Davidson’s experts will create an online support service for teachers, in order to assist and consult with how to implement these tasks in alignment with the regular curriculum.

* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 397