Participant Testimonials
The whole environment of the Banff Centre and the BIRS facility was extremely conducive to making progress with the goals of the workshop. The manager of the BIRS faclility was very helpful. We were able to make progress towards our own greater understanding of the importance of the Early Years of learning mathematics, and specifically Spatial Reasoning. A number of workable plans to move forwards were "cast", and I feel that these will be acted upon. I understand that the booking process for BIRS sessions has to be made quite a signficant amount of time in advance. It would be very helpful if this could be examined to see if it was possible to shorten the time for both longer sessions and the weekend sessions. The networking potential of bringing experts together is huge, and something that education is gradually picking up more and more from the business world. BIRS can facilitate this process in my opinion, AND actively demonstrate support to and involvement with the early years of learning mathematics.
I made some excellent new contacts. We have spent the day emailing about a joint project, in fact. This was an area I knew little about, but it is an exciting extension of my current work and will enrich it. I have a student who will be able to use the new collaboration that is emerging to enrich her work and make connections to new literature. So, I've only been home 1 day, but already I feel as if it was a great experience that will stimulate research activities.
