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Goals
Cyberchase is designed to help millions of children around the world develop and sustain enthusiasm for mathematics and increase their knowledge and skills. The project's overall goals are the following:
- To encourage children to develop a "can-do" attitude toward math
- To motivate children to approach mathematics with enthusiasm, confidence, and competence
- To help increase children's math knowledge and skills and involve them in reasoning and problem solving
- To extend the value and impact of Cyberchase in homes, classrooms, libraries, and after-school programs, with a special emphasis on reaching girls, minorities, and underserved children, particularly those without access to technology
- To present Cyberchase at prominent math, science, and technology conferences/events
- To facilitate outreach grant opportunities, workshop trainings, and development as well as the use of print and online educational resources and activities with partner organizations
Target Audience
The target audience is 6- to 11-year-olds.
Standards Addressed
Cyberchase now has print materials and activities spanning 52 mathematics topics. Each episode is an adventure driven by a different mathematics topic. Although not curricula themselves, the topics chosen are guided by the Principles and Standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and span the core mathematics curriculum for school-age children. These topics and concepts are valuable adjuncts to the classroom experience. Some of the concepts included are area, fractions and place value, skills such as estimation and recognizing patterns, and problem-solving strategies such as simplifying difficult problems. Topics are carefully selected for their importance to children's learning and for their suitability to storytelling on television.
When presenting mathematics on television, clarity is essential. Cyberchase focuses on one "big idea" in each program, such as "You can use a line graph to tell a story about how things change and to make predictions." Big ideas are chosen after research and discussion to ensure that they are mathematically significant and age-appropriate and address learning problems that children have with mathematics concepts.
For more information on the NCTM Standards, call 703-620-9840 or go to www.nctm.org.
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