Public Lecture on Mathematics, computer games and your child's career

Posted March 19, 1998


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - March 19, 1998
98-03-13-OTHER

Mathematics, computer games and your child?s career

Mathematics, Computer Games and Your Child's Career is the title of a
public lecture scheduled for 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 26 in Room
1B71 of the Engineering Building, University of Saskatchewan. The
speaker, Professor Maria Klawe, is the Vice-President, Student and
Academic Services at the University of British Columbia and has recently
been appointed to the NSERC-IBM Chair for Women in Science and
Engineering.

Among her many honours, Prof. Klawe was a winner of a Vancouver
YWCA Women of Distinction Award in 1997. Her current research
involves the study of how computer games may be designed to meet
several objectives such as to provide educational value, be entertaining,
and engage girls and boys equally. She is the founder and director of E-
GEMS (Electronic Games for Education in Math and Science), a large
scale collaborative project among computer scientists, mathematics
educators, and professional game developers.

Prof. Klawe will discuss how liking and learning mathematics in the
middle grades is very important in preparing children for careers in
science and technology. Acquiring skill and confidence using computers
during these years is also valuable and, for most children, this happens
primarily through playing computer games. E-GEMS' research pays
particular attention to girls' interactions with computers and computer
games because of low female participation in information technology
(one of the hottest fields for jobs now and for at least the next decade).
She will demonstrate Phoenix Quest, an innovative and entertaining E-
GEMS prototype mathematics game that has been widely used in her
research projects.

Professor Klawe?s visit to the U of S is sponsored by faculty in the
Departments of Mathematics and Statistics and Computer Science and
the Role Model Speaker Fund. The general public is welcome to attend
the lecture and a casual reception that will follow the talk.


For more information please contact:

Dr. Keith Taylor
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Saskatchewan
(306) 966-6100