About

=About Kangaroo Pie : A vision for a new type of mathematics teacher resource=

Kangaroo Pie is a project aiming to build a mathematics teaching resource aligned to the Australian Curriculum, created by and for mathematics teachers. The Kangaroo Pie vision is to offer these resources under a Creative Commons license, free of charge and free of restrictions, of practical benefit to all mathematics teachers and to their students.

A collaborative project ...
Building a resource to cover the mathematics school syllabus is a huge enterprise and will require the efforts, experience and insights of many people. The wiki principle of opening the content to all contributors is a key vision of this project : the material will be built, owned and managed by the entire mathematics teaching community. There are only relatively few mathematics teachers in Australia, and fewer still engaged in the online community, and thus we need to maximise the potential pool of contributors. Membership of the Kangaroo Pie wiki is open to any person with an interest in mathematics education

... for all mathematics teachers
In the spirit of the Australian Curriculum, the goal is to produce a resource of use to all mathematics teachers - across state boundaries and across school systems. While there will likely be a need to repackage and reformat core components to better fit each state syllabus, Kangaroo Pie's core components will be structured so they are useful to all mathematics teachers in Australia.

. **A mathematics teaching resource** The types of resources mathematics teachers need include: > //A searchable, collaborative and syllabus aligned tool to record useful online resources already exists at// [|MathsLinks]. > //Kangaroo Pie will link to MathsLinks rather than attempt to replicate a service that already meets our needs.//
 * Topic overviews
 * Key teaching ideas
 * Student misconceptions and teaching challenges
 * Outcome sheets
 * Sample teaching sequences and programs
 * Sample lesson plans - for particularly interesting or successful lesson ideas.
 * Diagnostic resources (pre-topic diagnostics, outcome diagnostics, post-topic diagnostics)
 * Worksheets
 * Ideas for student exploration
 * Revision resources
 * Links to online and video resources.
 * GeoGebra resources (or links to such resources - which could be placed on the GeoGebra.org wiki)
 * Links to freely available mathematics education research (mathematics teachers working at schools do not normally have access to content locked behind subscription journal firewalls).

Aligned to the Australian Curriculum
The Australian Curriculum mathematics strands and years will be used as the organising principle for the content. There will be one index page per ACARA K-10 Mathematics strand per year. Because different state jurisdictions are likely to repackage the ACARA K-10 strands and years into their own format, index pages will be made for different state syllabi to link into their respective ACARA components. For example, the NSW Board of Studies Mathematics K-10 organises the content into stages which cover two years - so an index page will also be created for each NSW stage, for each ACARA strand.

As the ACARA Senior Mathematics syllabus is still in draft stage (2011), and it is unclear what state jurisdictions will do, senior mathematics content will be organised according to topics. Index pages will be made for each senior course offering. This material is likely to be difficult to organise on a national level until some agreement on common content is reached.

Built by and for mathematics teachers
== There are many online resources for mathematics - too many of them for a busy teacher to cope with. A key goal of Kangaroo Pie is to __**develop a minimal set of high quality resources**__ ready for use by mathematics teachers currently working in the Australian school system. ==

The Kangaroo Pie project will attempt to recruit volunteer editors for different parts of the wiki (most likely responsible for one strand, for one stage). These editors will organise the areas they manage to keep them usable. As material accumulates, they will re-organise links so a core set of material is in the main index for each page, with other material linked from archive pages where interested users can look through the wider body of work at their leisure.


 * What if people can't agree on what is high quality or core material?** The wisdom of the collective should allow for differences in teaching approaches and use of different tools. The wiki page discussions can be used to suggest which material should be moved on or off the main index pages.

**Under Creative Commons** The goal is to create a resource free of copyright which can be reproduced in part, in full, or used to create derivative works. The suggested Creative Commons license is **CC-BY-SA**- which means the material may be used by anyone with the following conditions:


 * **By Attribution**: All uses must attribute the work to the creator of the work
 * **Share Alike:** All uses must offer the same share alike - meaning any reuse or derivative works must offer a CC-BY-SA license.

While commercial use is permitted, commercial users will have to offer any included or derivative work under the same license, effectively opening up parts or all of their offering into the Creative Commons.

Only material created under CC-BY-SA should be placed on Kangaroo Pie. __Teachers must take special care not to place copyright material from textbooks on Kangaroo Pie.__ Note also that while many Australian education authorities already adopt Creative Commons licenses, they may also claim ownership of work created by a teacher in their employ.


 * Who is the creator of the work?**
 * Content on Kangaroo Pie pages (the text entered in wiki pages) are considered as created by the Kangaroo Pie project. Attribution should be made to kangaroopie.wikispace.com
 * Resources created and contributed by individuals (such as worksheets, lesson plans) will be attributed to the individual who created them. Such resources should be marked CC-BY-SA with the name of the creator. Works derived from such resources will likewise by marked CC-BY-SA, and credit the sources.

How long will this take to build?
It will probably take two to three years before this resource makes a first pass at most areas of the K-10 curriculum. That's a long time before the first pass is completed, but if we don't start today - when will it ever be done? A goal will to be make this resource immediately useful for those areas is does cover - helping ensure repeat visitors, corrections, updates and possibly new contributors and editors. Like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge, this project will never actually be "finished".

What this project is NOT:
Kangaroo Pie is not intended as a forum for:
 * debating the merit of curriculum content or state implementations
 * debating different teaching approaches - there is room to accommodate resources for all approaches
 * advertising or aggressive promotion of commercial services and resources. If a contributing teacher feels a commercial resource they have used is of high value, it is appropriate for them to recommend it briefly, and flag that the resource is a commercial offering. //We may wish to add a special section in each kangaroo pie slice.//

**The Future : a digital resource for students?** With the framework and content in place for teacher support for each topic, we could begin to think about creating digital resources for students.