Educator spotlight: Can mathematics be fun?
Yossi Elran from the Davidson Institute, the educational arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science, certainly thinks so! He first ran his popular Maths Puzzles: Cryptarithms, Symbologies and Secret Codes course in May 2016. The course is now in its 12th run and it has since had a couple of siblings, An Introduction to Recreational Math: Fun, Games and Puzzles and Flexagons and the Math Behind Twisted Paper.
Dr Elran heads Davidson’s Center for Innovation in Science Education, he founded Israel’s premier science website, Davidson Online, and he has led the international recreational project Math and Science by Mail Club. But what keeps him motivated to encourage and inspire thousands of learners from all over the world through his FutureLearn courses? In his own words “I just want everyone in the world to experience that uplifting “Aha” moment of discovery. You see, learning is the art of creation and discovery, and everyone can do it – in any field, especially mathematics. Passionate educators make great courses.”