Community Building With And For Teachers At The Math Forum

This chapter addresses the way in which the Internet forms the core of an intentional, online community by promoting communication between interested parties. The Math Forum (mathforum.org) is a unique group of individuals who are committed to using computers and the Internet to enhance what they know about learning, teaching, and doing mathematics. The Math Forum includes programmers, project and service staff, Web persons, and an ever-expanding number of teachers, students, and other individuals (i.e., parents, software developers, mathematicians). Thus, community building for The Math Forum staff includes work with teachers, with partners (National Council of the Teachers of Mathematics, Mathematics Association of America, and so on), and with specific services developed by The Math Forum staff that enable teachers and students to come together to pose and seek solutions to problems. The Math Forum uses the Internet to provide interactive services that foster mathematical thinking and discussion. These services include Ask Dr. Math and several Problems of the Week (PoWs); a teacher discussion format called Teacher to Teacher (T2T); an archive of problems, participant contributions (e.g., lesson plans), and past discussions; and an Internet newsletter. Within four years, with no explicit efforts to garner promotion or publicity, the site grew to include 1,600,000 Web pages and to attract 3.5 million accesses and over 800,000 visitors per month – a third of which constitutes sticky traffic ranging from world-famous mathematicians to elementary school children

The Centrality Of Culture And Community To Participant Learning At And With The Math Forum

In this chapter, the terms culture and community are problematized, and their centrality to participant learning at and with The Math Forum (mathforum.org) is discussed. Culture, as it is used here, refers to the rituals and norms that come to be associated with a site and its functioning. Community describes recognition of connections to and identification with other participants. The Math Forum is an interactive and inquiry-informed digital library, or virtual resource center, for mathematics education. Previous chapters have addressed the ways in which The Math Forum has leveraged the concept of community in order to become a dynamic and resource-rich educational site (Renninger & Shumar, 2002; Shumar & Renninger, 2002). In the present chapter, this analysis is taken a step further. The culture of The Math Forum is described as providing its participants with a unique set of opportunities for learning and for making the relationship between the individual and the community one in which individual and community needs can both be met. Site culture enables contributions from individuals that by definition help to build out and sustain this community. Math Forum participants include Math Forum staff members and a mix of teachers, students, and other individuals such as parents, software developers, mathematicians, math educators, professionals, and tradespeople, many of whom also volunteer their time as mentors for the site. Participants differ not only in terms of their roles, but in their experience, level of expertise, and interest for mathematics (Renninger & Shumar, 2002)

The People\u27s Total War on COVID-19 : Urban Pandemic Management Through (Non-)Law in Wuhan, China

Although COVID-19 was first detected in the People’s Republic of China, the pandemic now appears contained there. Western and Chinese media attribute this apparent success to the central level of the Chinese state and the Communist Party. However, this article reveals that local entities provided critical contributions to China’s COVID-19 management, particularly in the pandemic’s first epicenter: Wuhan city in Hubei province. Chinese cities like Wuhan can fight public health emergencies through legal and nonlegal instruments. Although Wuhan had prepared for possible pandemics, its existing plans, institutions, and warning systems initially failed against COVID-19. The city did not contain the viral outbreak beginning in November 2019. As a result, Wuhan officials were forced to use strict measures to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. From January 23, 2020, a lockdown cordoned off the city, and from February 10, a closed management of neighborhoods introduced a curfew-like shutdown. These two cordons sanitaires and other so-called normative documents were imposed by Wuhan’s own COVID-19 Headquarters, a municipal mixed party–state organ. Still, the central level must approve—or even directly command—all fundamental decisions of local COVID-19 management. The center controls local entities like Wuhan not through channels of the state but through the vertical and horizontal conduits of the Communist Party, treating “the whole country as a chess game.” China’s “COVID-19 chess” has proven itself an effective method of pandemic containment. However, this central–local “chess game” yielded detrimental effects for many individuals within and outside Wuhan. The reason is that China’s central level, aiming at eliminating COVID-19 instead of merely flattening the curve, neither requires Wuhan to contain COVID-19 proportionately and balanced, nor allows individuals to challenge these containment measures in court. Therefore, without being held accountable, Wuhan could encroach on myriad rights and freedoms for millions of individuals for several months. And despite subsequent easing, China’s “people’s total war” against COVID-19 continues—but its focus has shifted. The strictest containment measures now apply to foreign nationals and Chinese citizens returning from abroad, as China has drawn a third cordon sanitaire around its national borders