Topcon GB & Ireland is leading the way in helping young people develop maths skills that are vital for real-life survey and construction projects. As part of its ongoing commitment to social business Class Of Your Own (COYO), Topcon has supported the launch of a new teaching guide for COYO’s Design Engineer Construct! ® (DEC!) learning programme. The guide has been designed to help show students the importance of maths outside of the classroom.
The ‘DEC! Maths Explained’ guide was created by qualified DEC! teachers from Drummond High School in Edinburgh, Michael Steele and Mark Holden. It provides ideas and suggested lesson plans for DEC! teachers, helping to put maths into the context of design, engineering, surveying and construction tasks. In doing so, the aim is to give real purpose to maths for students, and to demonstrate that built environment professionals use the same classroom maths principles in their jobs every day.
Including topics on spatial awareness, measurement, size, ratio and scale, the examples cover the different aspects of maths in many construction professions and subsequently encourage students to consider such careers.
The DEC! accredited learning programme was developed by Alison Watson, founder and chief executive of Class Of Your Own. It is designed to create and inspire the next generation of built environment professionals through project-based learning. As a key partner, Topcon has been working closely with DEC! for over five years to support the programme in a number of different ways, including providing equipment and training days for teachers and schools. Earlier this year, the positioning partner donated ten comprehensive surveying kits containing new Topcon OS total stations, tripods, prisms, measurement staffs and tapes. The schools were also trained on, and given access to, Topcon’s most recent version of its MAGNET suite software.
Dave Bennett, business manager at Topcon GB & Ireland, said: “Students often ask when they’ll use maths principles in everyday life as they struggle to understand the relevance in the real world. By putting maths into context of applications they’ll recognise, we hope to bring the subject to life in the classroom and subsequently spark an interest in construction careers after they leave school.”
Alison Watson, founder and chief executive of Class Of Your Own, said: “Drummond High School’s teachers have done a fantastic job in helping us put this guide together. We want to make the teaching syllabus as easy and useful to our teachers as possible. Through this guide we hope that we are doing just that, while also providing context to help explain maths in the world of work. It offers a way to making maths purposeful and accessible to a wide range of students and let them discover that it’s all around – in every room, building and bridge.”
To find out more about Topcon, visit: www.topconpositioning.com/en-gb
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About Topcon:
Topcon is the positioning partner for construction and geo-businesses in the UK and Ireland, offering precision technology that delivers increased efficiency across the workflow. With tailored support across a number of specialisms, including surveying, civil engineering, machine operation, Building Information Modelling and education, Topcon helps professionals to work smarter.
For more information about Topcon, visit www.topconpositioning.com/en-gb
