Oxford Open Learning Blogger and English Teacher Anne Thomas continues her series famous literary figures for Black History Month. One of the earliest classic novels I read at my secondary school was The Count of Monte Cristo, written by Alexandre Dumas one of those books with everything for a 12 year old girl, excitement, history, […]
Redressing the balance 5 : Emilie du Châtelet
Voltaire famously wrote that Emilie du Châtelet was “a great man whose only fault was being a woman” – I suspect that this was meant as a compliment although it doesn’t really come across that way today! In this blog we’ll look at her life and achievements. Emilie du Châtelet was born in Paris like […]
World Teacher’s Day
On 5 October 1966 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held an intergovernmental conference in Paris concerning the status of teachers across the world. The outcome was the politically persuasive (but sadly not legally binding) UNESCO/ILO* Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers, outlining the minimal acceptable standards in key areas such as […]
Scientists, Engineers, Mathematicians – your country needs you!
The Royal Academy of Engineering has recently published a report warning of a shortage of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) graduates. At the moment demand is significantly greater than supply in the UK with high wage premiums being established for people with such degrees in a climate of falling graduate pay. Around 1.25 million […]
Redressing the Balance 4: Sofia Kovalevskaya
This is the story of Sofia Kovalevskaya – a Russian mathematician who was the first woman to join the editorial staff of a mathematical journal and to hold a prominent university position in modern Europe. Sofia Kovalevskaya was born in Moscow in 1850. Mathematics historians say that she became interested in mathematics as a child […]
Booking January exams
The deadline for booking exams in the winter series is the 21st October 2012. Schools and colleges will have resumed for the Autumn term and if you need to either book a re-sit , or a first time exam in the winter series, then now is the time to do it. If wait until after […]
Redressing the balance 2 : Hypatia
Debbie Gill continues her blog on famous female mathematicians, giving background information for Maths GCSE students. Try googling “female mathematician” and Hypatia will probably appear in most of your search results. So who was she? Hypatia was born in Alexandria, Egypt in around 370AD. It is thought that she was educated by her father who […]
Maths in the City
Have you ever wondered what the point is of the maths you are learning in your Key Stage 3 or GCSE Maths course? Marcus du Sautoy and his team of mathemagicians may have a few answers for you. They are on a mission to bring to life the “maths that makes our cities work”. From […]
Redressing the balance 1 : An inclusive history of Mathematics
When writing my blog series on famous mathematicians I was struck by the fact that most of the famous names we know from the history of mathematics belong to men from the West. The mathematics studied at GCSE and A level is full of theorems, rules and numbers (Pythagoras, Fibonacci, Descartes to name but a […]
Need to re-sit?
Results days have been and gone and everyone will be breathing sighs of relief because they now know how well they did. As usual we have been notified about some really excellent results by many of our distance learning students, but inevitably a few have been disappointed. This is never easy for anyone, especially the […]