Registration and Light Lunch

Welcome and Opening Remarks from the Executive

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Mathematical Moments That Leave Us Breathless and Wanting to Learn More

Imagine a moment when something took your breath away. It might have been a song you heard, a play or movie you saw, a poem or book you read, a sunrise or sunset you saw, an encounter with nature, an invention; a piece of technology, or a magic show. Can you imagine what life would be like without such moments to remember that leave us breathless? Join Ron Lancaster for a discussion of what teachers can to do to ensure that students have similar encounters with mathematics that leave them wanting to learn more and that invite them to marvel and be amazed at a subject that is truly the greatest show on earth.

Ron Lancaster, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

CONVERSATION CAFÉ

Meet and chat with conference presenters for a sneak peek

Best Fit: TI Technology for Math, Science and STEM

Come and see what is new from Texas Instruments. You will be shown new technology and resources available for learning in Math, Science and STEM. All participants will receive free software.

Darryl Marchand, Texas Instruments

A Game Changer in Statistics: Teach how you want to any group of students

Statistics by Learning Objective content is built around 200+ learning objectives organized by sections across 24 modules, enabling you to teach what you want to teach, how you want to teach, when you want to teach it. With the power of WebAssign, you have the flexibility to cherry-pick and organize these self-contained learning objectives to seamlessly align with your syllabus and teaching style. Real-world data sets, technology guides, 1400+ relevant examples and 2000+ assessments across a variety of discipline-specific interests provide the context students need to connect the dots to the statistical concepts at hand.

Tia Nguyen, Katherine Baker-Ross, and Maria Cilic, Nelson

Math Phobia

Do your first-year students suffer from Math Phobia? We know that this is one of the main challenges for students when they enter college. Pearson has worked to ensure that our print and online products address this challenge. Please join Pearson author Michelle Boué to see how she has worked with Pearson to produce math content that helps overcome Math Phobia.

Michelle Boué, Pearson Education

Because Learning Changes Everything

Join McGraw-Hill to learn more about the evolution of our award-winning Connect and ALEKS technologies. Connect now includes the new SmartBook 2.0, delivering a more personalized, productive, and accessible learning experience for students and instructors. ALEKS offers a placement, preparation, and learning solution that combines a placement assessment that places from Basic Math to Calculus I with six months of personalized learning and remediation to help students succeed.

Mirwais Akbari and Cathie Lefebvre, McGraw Hill

Updates to IntroMath to Support the Greatest Math Show for Students

We’ve had our ear to the ground!

Carefully listening to suggestions from professors and analyzing the interactions made by students on our system, Vretta has developed intuitive features into IntroMath and updated its design and user interface to support its evolution into a powerful and intelligent homework companion for mathematics and statistics courses.
For successfully transforming the way students interact with mathematics for almost a decade, IntroMath has also been recognized with the prestigious award for the Best Use of Formative Assessment from the international eAssessment Association in April 2019.
We invite you to our session to get first-hand information on the new state-of-the-art developments that enable IntroMath to provide students with the Greatest Math Show in mathematics and statistics.

Anand Karat and James Howell, Vretta Inc.

Math Matters: Real-World Applications to Supercharge the Classroom

Most students aren’t interested in math for math’s sake. It’s the real-world applications of mathematics that makes the subject come alive. This is even truer at the college level as students consider continuing their education within a STEM field. While most educators would agree that introducing real-world math applications is important, finding engaging applications isn’t easy and the day-to-day rigours of educating students leaves little time to develop new material. That’s why Maplesoft has developed Maple applications in electrical engineering, cell biology, environmental science, epidemiology, and more, to engage students and energize the classroom. This presentation will showcase examples in linear algebra, calculus, differential equations, physics, statistics, and many others.

Clay Lambert and Yoogin Doolab, Maplesoft

Hospitality Suite (sponsored by McGraw-Hill Education)

Dinner

PUB(lisher) Night (sponsored by Pearson and Texas Instruments)

Come on over to check out the publishers and vendors. The bar will be open!

The Greatest Talent Show (sponsored by Pearson)

Walk/Run Activity

Start the day with a walk/run! Meet at the Gazebo located at the front of the main lobby.

Breakfast

Using GeoGebra in a First Year Linear Algebra Class

The open source software GeoGebra (see www.geogebra.org) provides an easy way to create interactive and dynamic web applications about geometry, algebra and calculus. It is available free of charge and is used by thousands of students and teachers around the world. We will explore how it can be used as a tool for teaching entry level mathematics courses. I will show I set up GeoGebra activities and use them in my current linear algebra class.

Xinli Wang, University of Toronto

How to Map Your Math Mind

As a Pre-Health Science math teacher, I have noticed that our students require more guidance when it comes to studying strategies and making connections with learned mathematical concepts. This past term, I have experimented with Novak’s Concept Maps (see http://cmap.ihmc.us/docs/theory-of-concept-maps), a tool that allows students to organize their learning both conceptually and visually. In this presentation, I will share my experiences and show that our current go-to strategy of mastering a problem set to prepare for a test is just not enough. We will also talk test-taking strategies and develop our own mind maps in small groups.

Elisa Romeo, George Brown College

An Update On Our Math Assessment & Upgrading System

Over the past year, the Ontario Colleges Mathematics Test (OCMT) has been evolving to serve the needs of students and educators at high schools, colleges, and universities by strengthening student confidence and preparing them for success in their math courses. We invite you to learn more about the impact of the OCMT on the Educational Quality and Ability Office (EQAO) scores of participating schools, the technological evolution of the OCMT to bring this innovative assessment-for-learning experience in the hands of every student, and the expansion of the assessment bank to diagnose students in a variety of programs for success in mathematics.

Mona Nouroozifar, Humber College

Using Office 365 to Teach Mathematics

What presentation is complete without a good platform? Chances are your college has a subscription to the Office 365 platform for you and your students. With its extensive set of mathematics input features, it is an excellent platform to enhance and facilitate communication within your department or even with and among your students. We will look at the features of Office 365, from Word to OneDrive and SharePoint to Teams. We will start with getting you connected and then look at some aspects that will use math tools and departmental collaboration. Bring your devices and get connected so you have a solid platform to start off the 2019-2020 school year.

Cameron Redsell- Montgomerie, Mohawk College

Holistic Educational Experience for Success in Business and Finance Mathematics

Experience has shown that being successful beyond the classroom in business and financial mathematics requires more than just mastering the ability to pass exams and tests. While we believe there is value in testing, we do not consider this to be the most important skill students take away from our courses. In this session, we will demonstrate the impact of real-world cases, simulations, group studies, and interactive assessments that provide students with a holistic educational experience leading to success in the classroom and beyond.

Lisa Mackay and Paul Obour, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology

Taming the Lions in My Class: A Gamified Approach to Teaching Mathematics

Trying to get students excited about math can sometimes feel like performing a trapeze act in the classroom. Balancing crucial fundamental math concepts with fun and engaging content can be intimidating. But by introducing games and interactive challenges, students become fully engaged and motivated to take their fundamental math skills to the next level! Through this session, you will get a hands-on demonstration on how to integrate games in your class. Don’t forget to bring your laptop with you!

Betty Pratt, Seneca College

Bringing Statistics Home: The Launch of a New Interactive Online Resource by Vretta

The father of science fiction, H.G. Wells, once said “statistical thinking will one day be as necessary a qualification for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write”. As professors, we know that most of our students do not share this same passion for the importance of statistics! In response to this, we are developing a digitally-rich online resource that Canadian college business students will find intuitive and valuable, helping them to effectively engage with statistics and find greater value in its study. We invite you to our session to learn more about how you can help your students master statistics by connecting abstract concepts to their practical applications using this resource.

Joshua Emmanuel, Humber College, & Sean Saunders, Sheridan College

Using OneNote and Open Resources

Instead of picking a textbook for introductory level math and statistics classes, why not choose open resources to help deliver your material? Using Microsoft OneNote and free open resources, you can create and curate your content all in one place, improving on and developing past iterations as you go. Using a OneNote Class Notebook also allows students to sign-in synchronously or asynchronously, helping virtual or hyflex students stay on track and work in a more collaborative environment. Feel free to bring your own device as this session will demonstrate and walk you through multiple options for using this tool and incorporating open resources in your classes!

Meghan Corcoran, Cambrian College

Pathway to a SMILE

Imagine a classroom without blackboards, without walls, without boundaries. SMILE is a Synchronous Mobile Interactive Learning Environment that allows the instructor to present and record lessons anywhere any time on any mobile device. Students interact in real time in virtual or real classrooms, using features such as whiteboards, audio-video, chat and polling, thus eliminating barriers imposed by geography, economic status and ability. In this presentation, you will be invited to join a live online SMILE session, so bring your laptops, tablets, iPhones or Android devices and experience for yourself a new way of classroom instruction. [Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttwvnY2-lec&list=PLNJ4bb0RRGLBJo2VUtVB_7xeWO0uKRR-2]

Richard Mitchell, Humber College

Lunch

Inter-Active Activities : See the sign-up sheets for activities, including:
Golf / Walking / Biking Trail/ Badminton/ Tennis/ Table Tennis/ Archery /Canoes / Kayaks
/ Paddle-boats/Mini-golf/Bocce / Horseshoes / Shuffleboard/ Archery
Complete the Math Problem Challenge PRIZES!!!!

Hospitality Suite (sponsored by McGraw-Hill Education)

Group Photo

DINNER/ Annual General Meeting/ Reports from OAME, AMATYC ELECTIONS

The Greatest Cirque Show (sponsored by Vretta)

Walk/Run Activity

Start the day with a walk/run! Meet at the Gazebo located at the front of the main lobby.

Breakfast

Using Semantics to Impose Structure and Teach the Fundamentals of Mathematics

This presentation advances the point of view that definitions, theorems, and algorithms in mathematics evolve as a result of the ever-increasing level of complexity of our problem-solving needs. This presentation ties such topics as the formal classification of numbers, the evolution of the syntax of algebra, and the deconstruction of algebraic statements using the analysis-synthesis technique to the increasing level of complexity of the problems that we solve. In doing so, it provides a framework for the teaching of the fundamentals of mathematics that is applicable to a diverse set of pure and applied disciplines.

Afshin Azari-Vala, George Brown College

A Virtual Stage To Connect Mathematics Professors

In a survey published this past fall of about 2000 professors, 75% mentioned that they support the increased use of educational technologies and 30% described themselves as early adopters of new technologies. Have you ever wondered how to connect with these educators and be able to discuss and debate the pros and cons of being able to successfully use technologies to teach mathematics? Have you waited eagerly for annual conferences to listen to fellow educators share information on their teaching methods? I would like to introduce you to an open virtual platform that has been recently launched by Vretta to connect math professors across our country, a platform to discuss and share technological adoptions and innovations to produce the greatest math show in their classroom.

Cameron Redsell- Montgomerie, Mohawk College

Mathematics and Music: The Greatest Show on Earth!

Come one, come all! Step right up and see the amazing duo of mathematics and music! Learn the mysteries of how successful song writers use a “formula” to write the perfect song! Be amazed as you explore how the tunings of modern instruments can be derived using trigonometry and logarithms! Explore the musical qualities of group theory and the irrational numbers! And marvel at a live demonstration by a real-life mathemusician! This is one show you won’t want to miss – only at the 2019 OCMA, where the “Big Top Rises for the Greatest Math Show” ever!

Sean Saunders, Sheridan College

Producing a Great Math Show by Working Smarter, Not Harder

Many teachers wrestle with issues in their own classes that, if they had clear insight, would move their classes from good shows to great shows. But how can busy instructors manage that improvement while they are very busy teaching? A surprising answer is to begin resolving the issues from a grassroots approach. This session will discuss strategies that will enable instructors to begin to examine questions that will help them to work more efficiently.

Tim Sibbald, Nipissing University

No (Stand Alone) Mathematics Course for First Semester Students

Bridging the gap between a new student’s mathematical skills and the skill level they need by the end of the first semester is never easy. We have integrated math with physics for our first semester Electronics Engineering Technology students. The course presents a foundational view of physics to support an electronics education with a just-in-time delivery of math to support the problem solving core of the course with six contact hours per week. This is our second semester. This presentation will look at what we are doing and how we deliver the topics using this integrated concept with feedback from faculty and students. We welcome your feedback, since we are exploring new territory!

Dave Schuett, Durham College

Gamification in the Mathematics Classroom

Mathematical fluency is a skill becoming more essential with every passing year, yet many students struggle with mathematics. Despite their struggles in the classroom, students tend to enjoy and succeed with many table-top and electronic games that require non-trivial elements of mathematics. By incorporating gamification elements in the classroom, instructors can increase students’ engagement, reduce mathematical anxiety, and open a vast array of effective tools to describe complex mathematical concepts. Mathematics has a special relationship with games and strategic thinking that most other fields do not share. This presentation will cover the link between mathematics and games and present examples of gamification tools and practices that can be used to teach various mathematical concepts.

Alexander Gurevich, Humber College

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Be More Unicorn: Using your inner sparkle for teaching math

Unicorns possess characteristics that have emerged and seized the human imagination for many years. Unicorns are magical, fabulous, powerful, playful, and fierce. They live a life that is full of wonder, and inspire others. As math teachers, we can help learners find their inner creativity resulting in the joy of learning as they break out of their comfort zone. Stories will be shared on how designing rich and meaningful activities can have an impact on how we relate and teach mathematics to our students. Explore how to harness your internal unicorn and push your students to towards an innovative process that encompasses concept development, applied creativity, and experimentation.

Amy Lin, Director of Teaching and Learning, Seneca College

Lunch and Closing