 Hi, Zor. Do you need any help with anything? Just checking in to see if you're ready to present. Hi, I'm Zor. Zor Shachman. Welcome to Unizor Education. Do you hear me? Hello, anybody? Is anybody hearing me? Zor, they don't have audio privileges. I was just giving them just in case. I'm going to get to take it away, actually. But you hear me, right? Right. If you look in the chat, people are responding, yes. Yeah, okay, great. Now, so welcome to Unizor Education, which I conditionally call Creative Minds through Art of Mathematics. I'm planning to do some speech presentation first, and then I will do some functionality slides, and then I will open for questions and answers, hopefully. So let me first start about myself. I am a mathematician by education, computer programmer, and financial advisor by profession. Also, I consider myself a math teacher by inspiration, well, not professionally. I was educated in the former Soviet Union, graduated from high school specializing in advanced mathematics. I had a brilliant teacher, by the way, a math teacher, Felix Barenbaum, and I still, after 50 years, maintain the email contact with him. I participated in many math Olympics back in the Soviet Union. These are basically math competitions. And then I obtained my graduate degree in mathematics from Moscow-Lomalovsky University at the time when the department of mathematics of this university was actually one of the best in the world. Well, since then things changed. From 1979, I live and work in New York. My son was born here, and grandchildren as well. Now, my first encounter with middle and high school mathematics in New York was through my son's education. Considering myself a specialist, I was quite interested in how mathematics is taught in his school. To my disappointment, I found the system of education directed more towards developing of math skills, like to accomplish this, you have to do that. Instead of developing students' intelligence and political thinking and creativity, which my own education was based upon. Not denying the necessity of having certain math skills, I believe that the system which is based only on how to approach is an excellent tool to teach a profession, but not the mathematics which is an art and the science and very rarely, for very few people, becomes a profession. In my opinion, the skills developed by the system of math education in most schools is not efficient because these math skills learned in school are rarely needed in real life. Like, for instance, how many times in your life do you have to solve quadratic equation? And two, it causes actual loss of students' interest since most of them perfectly understand that they would never need these skills, which in turn negatively affect their study in general. Students learn material just to pass the test and then happily forget it. I consider the system which my own education was built upon as having some value, and certain categories of students, their parents and teachers, might be interested in following it. So after retirement, I have decided to implement it via internet and that's how the idea of UNISOR education was born. Now, thinking about the idea, how many people in their practical experience need to do the real math which they have learned in school? Like, for instance, find the volume of a sphere, for instance. Well, not many, I'm sure. My personal career, by the way, after graduation from the university as a mathematician, was concentrated in the area of computer programming, system software development, finance, all areas which somewhat related to math and mathematics, and yet I've never had to solve any quadratic equation, or I basically didn't use most of the factual knowledge, I still remember quite well, by the way, from my school years. I think this lack of applicability of factual knowledge, which traditional education emphasizes as the most important for students to learn, is the main obstacle in learning math. Students do not feel the need for this information and cool down their study of mathematics, basically. Here is what I offer as a replacement of traditional fact-based and memorization-centered course of mathematics in high school. Students have to think about math for their brains as they think about gym for their muscles. In as much as the latter is needed for physical development, the former needs it for development of their creativity, analytical thinking, ability to solve real-life problems that new previously unknown solutions. In real life, people rarely lift weights, but they do it in the gym because it improves their health, develop their strengths, stamina, do whatever the real life expects them to do. Similarly, in real life, people don't have to prove series of geometry, but doing it in class will greatly improve their ability to solve real-life problems. Math in the school is a tool to develop the brain as weights in the gym are developing their muscles. Now, nothing prepares young students for solving real-life problems as effectively as proving series of mathematics and solving mathematical problems. Math is actually a very high opinion about this as a tool to develop the intelligence. Math should be taught as an ultimate form of art with everything an artist operates being completely a product of his intellectual power. It's abstract, it's artificial, and that's exactly what mathematics is all about. Using this abstraction, students can create his own universe giving full freedom of his creative side trying to find new ways in the world fully under his command. Now, strongly believing in this approach in math teaching, I have decided to make this educational website, Unisor.com. My plan is to introduce students of high school age as briefly as possible to math concepts and to educate most of the time to solving problems and proving theorems. My initial plan actually was to just record lectures dedicated exclusively to problem solving and theorems. But then I realized that without theoretical lectures I would just not be able to explain what those problems and theorems are all about. So I started with theory at that moment the site was purely informational. Then a chance meeting with a specialist in management engineering, Jesse Brogan, actually led into a fruitful discussion with him about this website educational process might be built. So not just an informational website which people can go and like from encyclopedia take some information, but the real process. So I've added a lot of functionality to my website that facilitates the whole educational process that includes active participation of all interested parties which basically I'm going to talk about this a little later. So I would like to mention that the site Unisor.com is completely free, no commercials, no advertising. It's used by some people around the world that can't say many, but I do have a certain number of hits per month. My goal is to convince as many people as possible, students, parents and teachers, that this approach to math education is significantly more useful and produces significantly more prepared young individuals. Unisor is actually a work in progress. My plans to expand the site are very ambitious. Well, at the present moment many fundamental concepts are already covered and it's a good time to start working with the site. Now let's talk about participants. Who is this particular site for? There are three categories of Unisor users. Well, first of all, obviously students, they are main laborers, so to speak, in the educational process. Their job is to study. Now there are their parents or supervisors. They are responsible adults who are capable to control the educational process thus performing basically managerial functions. Now these responsibilities to manage the educational process can be performed, as I said, by a parent or a supervisor, a group supervisor, or a teacher who is basically given these responsibilities to supervise, to manage. And also the third category is the providers of educational material, which is also teachers. Now functions can be delegated, as I said. For instance, a supervisory function can be performed by a group teacher who checks all the students' exam scores, marks, courses as completed, enrolls students in new topics, etc. But logically speaking, functions of control and providing educational materials, though might be embodied in the same person, the teacher, I separate just verbally into two categories. One, which is supervisory and I call it the parent basically, or a supervisor. And another is a teacher, which is a provider of educational material. Now for teachers, Unizor offers for teachers who are providers, I mean of educational material, offers to the way to individually provide, for instance, like lectures, video recorded, notes, etc. If they play the role of supervisors, well, they can individually supervise educational process of different students in a flipped classroom, for instance, environment, allowing each one to go at his own pace along an individualized plan and checking the results, directing students to areas which need improvements. Working with Unizor individually, students can come to a teacher only when additional consultation is needed. Thus reducing basically the workloads for teachers and allowing them to spend more time where the extra time is needed. So for students, Unizor offers a challenging environment of solving problems. Some might be more complex than others, by the way, Unizor are considered to be the website for advanced mathematics, so maybe it's not for everybody, that's fine. Also, there is an examination part of the web page which registered students actually can go to to take exam and to quantitatively find out their level of knowledge. Finally, for parents who are playing the role of supervisors, the managers of educational process, Unizor offers actually full control over it if they're interested in this function. And by the way, I do strongly recommend parents participation. Now that includes enrolling their children in individual courses, checking their scores on the exams and marking courses as completed if exams are passed basically to their satisfaction. It should be stated upfront that many Unizor users right now, as I know, are just unregistered students who do not have any supervision or anybody else involved. They just go to the site and they take a look at this lecture or that lecture, well, it will basically, without any kind of process, so to speak. Well, that's fine. But for the record, Unizor is much more than just a collection of theoretical and practical lectures and notes. It's created with the purpose to establish an educational process which I would actually strongly recommend people to take. So these are participants. Now, what's inside? What's the contents of the Unizor? Well, right now, there is one course, Advanced Mathematics for Teenagers on the site and I'm basically the one who is teaching this course. I'm putting my lectures as a video recorded files and notes for these lectures. However, it's designed with expansion in mind and other teachers can also contribute certain information after proper authorization. There is a functionality for teachers who would like to contribute their information. I also would like to expand the repertoire, not only mathematics, but I can probably put physics in it and some other material. But right now, it's only for advanced mathematics for teenagers. Now, the educational material is hierarchically organized as a complete course, like mass for teenagers basically as a course. It's divided into independent categories like algebra, geometry, trigonometry. Now, every particular category is subdivided into topics. For instance, there is a topic, complex numbers in algebra or triangles in geometry. And each topic contains certain number of lectures. For instance, there are eight, seven, or nine, I don't remember, lectures about triangles in geometry. Now, every lecture is supplemented with notes. If it's a theoretical lecture about what is basically a complex number. So every lecture has a note and I will show you how it basically looks on the screen. And the topics have usually exams. Now, some topics don't have, but that's just because I didn't have time to put them in, but that's, you know, working progress anyway. So, lectures are of theoretical nature and also about some problem solving. Usually, the notes for problem solving lecture contain only the conditions of the problems and the solutions are actually in the presentation, in the video presentation itself. Now, if you would like to go to a process, like to be able to enroll, check the exam, etc., that requires registration. The registration is very basic thing, like email and I think country you are from, something like this. Very simple registration. But if you are a registered student, then, yes, usually take your supervisor actually can enroll you and then the student can take this particular course, take exam, then the supervisor can take a look whether everything is fine or not with exam and mark the course as completed. Well, basically, that's the speech which I wanted to say before presenting anything related to the site itself. I do have a certain number of slides which will explain the functionality of the system. Now maybe it makes sense to ask if there are any questions for me right now. You can put it on the chat if you want to. I'll just wait for a second or so before starting. Thank you, Lucy. By the way, do you see my video as well? So, let me start with the functionality of the website. I have a certain number of I have to go through certain I have to mention our sponsors which is very important actually they are providing financial support for this particular conference. So these are our sponsors. That's one thing which I would like to mention. The second thing is this is a map which I would like to use it as a whiteboard and place marks wherever you guys are from. I see one mark at the United States. Now you enabled everybody to use the whiteboard. Okay, so if you are if you would be you would be able to choose this star on the left of the map and just click on the star and then press it somewhere wherever you are basically from or any other symbol like this for instance. Okay, so I have four places right now, right? Okay, thank you very much and let me proceed with next slide on the presentation and that would be the beginning of the functionality. So the first time when somebody goes to Unisor.com this is the front page presented to people. Most important but on this page actually is the menu on the left. You see this vertical menu which starts with home then how to register supervised study teach and then the learning material under the course Math 14s. So it has certain categories as I was saying. Now the categories are basically are encompassing more or less what I believe should be included into this course of advanced mathematics for high school teenagers. On the right side from the video you have a couple of very important points which I would like people basically to read when they are on the front page of Unisor. It basically explains very, very in a very simple format what maybe the whole site is about but I would like to quote actually Albert Einstein and I do have it on this front page. Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. This basically corresponds to what I was trying to say that if you are teaching in school only the procedures the methods how to then basically it's a good way to teach a robot but if you would like to teach a productive member, a creative member of society then you have to really spend some time to develop his or her intelligence, his analytical thinking and creativity and that's what I was trying to convey in this particular educational website. Now, if you are an unregistered student from this web page you can basically go to any particular category and in that category you can choose a topic. For instance, you want to go to a category called Algebra and if you press the Algebra on the website you will have this page. So Algebra is divided into many different topics. Harmony of numbers, numerical systems, rational numbers, etc. Now then if you will click on one of the topics you will see a set of lectures dedicated to this particular topic. So let's for instance you are clicking on complex numbers topic. That's my third slide. You will see this. So now you still have a global menu on the left but to the right of it you have the lecture which is video presentation itself that you can just play if you are in the live website and we can actually do it at the very end if it works. Now you have the same lecture basically the same material explained like in a textbook basically. And on the right you have the menu. Now the lecture which is presented as always the first one in this particular case called lecture. And then there are other lectures as well which continue developing this particular topic. Now usually I have one or two lectures dedicated to theoretical material and then a certain number of lectures dedicated to problem solving or additional theorem and additional discussion about this particular topic which I consider to be relevant in discussing this. Now for instance in case of complex numbers I have a problem for instance how to take the square root of i for instance. So those people who are familiar with complex numbers is a problem which they can solve obviously and I do explain how to do this. So basically any topic which is on the menu left is organized in this particular fashion. So the topic which you are particularly interested if you are a student you can get to this topic and basically listen to the lecture solve the problems and by the way speaking about problems, yes I do explain in my lecture which is dedicated to the problems the solution. However I always encourage people to try to solve the problem themselves first and only then listen to my lecture and listen to my solution. I mean maybe yours is better than mine no problem with that. So that's how the I would say passive education well not passive really but it's not a process educational process. It's just an information which you can get from the website. That's how it works. Now let's go back to the home page. You see on the top left corner there's a sign in and sign out. So if you are a registered student or if you want to register you click the sign in and then depending on what exactly you would like to be you are a student or a supervisor or you are a teacher who would like to contribute his own educational material to the site. Depending on that you will have this or that sign in screen. So let me just consider two different examples. First if you are a parent or a supervisor and secondly if you are a student now teachers who would like to contribute their information. It's a different story. I don't think I would like to present it right now because it's a quite complicated thing. Alright, so for instance you are a parent and you would like to register as a parent and you will have your student also registered as a student. Then you see there is in the middle of the left part of the button. So you can click on this button and then you can enter whatever information is required and this is basically the name and the email address and if you are a parent you will be asked for what are the students you are registering for. If they are not registered yet you can just basically leave it empty then wait for the student to register and then you can update your registration information. But basically I'm looking for a match between parent should list the students he is responsible for and student should list a parent or supervisor who is supervising his educational process. So let's consider you are a parent and you are already registered and now you have signed in. I have this p1 at Unisor.com as a test parent and for instance you are signing in so what would be the next screen which you will see? The next screen would be this parent menu. Now parents can do the following things. First of all they can supervise those students which are registered as their students. Now on this screen you see my students basically presented here. Now parent1 at Unisor.com students call students 11 and students 12. That's their names. It's all the test systems and for each student I have current enrollment and completed enrollment. Now in this particular case my students 11 is enrolled in the class called Maths 14 which is the only available course actually which I have right now on the website. Student 12 is not enrolled in anything. In this course Maths 14 do in this particular case. Well there are three buttons on the left. Report, pass and delete. Well delete is obviously that I did something by mistake I didn't want to enroll this person etc. So that completely deletes everything about this particular student. Now pass is basically transferring information from the current enrollment into the completed enrollment. So if I will press pass for this particular course of student 11 then Maths 14 will become completed and that would be the end of it and then I will have to enroll in something else. Report is more interesting. You can take a look at the report as the process is actually going through. As the student is going through the process and passes exams then you can see the reports and here is the report. So if you press the report button that's what you will see for student 11 course called Maths 14. It's hierarchically organized. You see the same directory which I have the same menu which I have in the beginning like Maths Concepts Algebra Geometry etc. It's all broken down into topics and each topic has exams and for each topic I specify what's the score on this particular exam of this particular user and what's the maximum score which can be obtained if all problems are correctly solved. This is the basis for the parent or supervisor or teacher who is doing this particular supervision. This is the information which can be used to decide basically to pass or not to pass this particular student to consider this particular enrollment as completed or not. Personally I recommend not to consider it completed until the score is equal to maximum score and considering that exams on this website can be taken unlimited number of times just do as much as necessary to basically complete all the exams successfully and then the topic would be considered done. Now, you can actually enroll the student into Maths 14, the entire course in which case you cannot really make it completed unless it's really completed in all its components, all its topics. Or you can actually enroll the person individually in each topic. For instance, you can enroll in Algebra only. How to enroll is another functionality on this parent supervisor screen which I'm going to explain right now. You are familiar with this My Students functionality of the parent. There are three buttons. My Students, Available, Educational Materials and My Profile. My Profile is not interesting. You just change your name or password. Available Educational Materials button this is the road to enroll the students. That's my next slide. For instance, you would like to enroll one of the students and you press the Available Educational Materials button on the next screen. Now, you see that you have basically expanded it here. Now, this is a live menu. You can press this minus, for instance, to put it together or plus to expand it. And for each one, either you have the ability to drill down. That's the drill button on the left. Or to enroll somebody, one of your students in this particular course. Either you can enroll on the very top level, like Mass for Teens, for instance. Or into any of the hierarchically lower levels. For instance, you would like the person to be enrolled only in the triangles of the geometry. Well, then you can drill down to triangles for geometry and click enroll there. And as soon as you click enroll, you will get this particular screen. It gives you all the students and it asks basically which one of your students you would like to enroll in this or that particular topic. Now, in this case, I click the enroll for congruence and symmetry in the geometry. And that's where my little window with student's enrollment form appeared. So I click whoever student I would like to enroll, press OK. And since then this student will be enrolled. And you will see this student as in this particular case, as I was already showing, this is what's the enrolled student 11 for the complete course, Mass for Teens. That's how it looks. So this is for the parent or supervisor or a teacher who is playing the role of supervisor and would be before. And now, the second category is the student. So now, if you are a student, you are signing in. And again, you have to register first and if you are students like in my particular case, you would specify the parent which I was talking about before called P1 at supervisor. So now you are submitting your information as a student. You are registering as a student and you are signing in as a student. And then the next information will be presented to you is this one. And here, you will see only the courses which you are enrolled by your supervisor. Now, this is slightly different because you are not registered and you go from the top menu from the very first screen, from the home screen. There, you can go to any topic and basically do whatever you want, basically listen to lectures and solve problems, but not taking exams because nobody knows who you are. If you are a registered and signed in student, then only topics which are you are enrolled in by your supervisor and you can do two things. Either you study or you take exam. So as you see each topic has these two buttons, study or take exam. And obviously if you study, then you will see exactly the same screen as if you would go directly from the home screen. So study is exactly the same. Study for a registered student is basically the same as study for anonymous person who is just in the same system. You will have exactly the same lectures, exactly the same notes for the lectures and problems, etc. Now if however you are a registered student and you click exam for a topic, that's what will be presented to you. So this is an examination for a topic called circles in geometry. It has 12 problems as you see. Now there are a couple of explanation words, but this is in green you have one problem, one of the 12 actually and you have whatever number of answers here. So you basically click on whatever answer you choose as the right one then you confirm it and then you go to the next problem and the next and the next and that's how you complete your exam for this particular topic called circles. And you will see the score basically. Now each problem has certain number of points and the number of points is ranging from one to three. One is an easy three is the hardest problem. And obviously at the end your score will be accumulated and your supervisor parent or a teacher who ever supervises manages your process will see on the report what exactly your scores are on every individual exam and then hierarchical combined and summed up to hierarchical levels. Well, basically this is all the information which I wanted to present to you as far as the slides are concerned. And if you have any questions I would gladly try to answer them. You have to click the hand if you would like to say something. Lucy, is there anything I should mention as well? Yes, okay. You have to press talk. Daniel. I gave you permission to use the mic. Hello. I don't hear. Oh, yes, right. Daniel, press talk. Talk button. No, I don't hear anything. Well, you can try the chat window. I will repeat for everybody. I don't know how useful it will be if I will do some tour with you on unizor.com itself since we have some 15 minutes left. Well, the website is unizor.com so if you want you can let me take a poll. I would like to know if you would like to see how unizor works live on the chat window. Hello. I just I think Daniel hasn't touched his mic and he turned it on and there was some feedback. I turned it off. Okay, thank you, Lucy. So how about polling? Can we actually ask the participant? We have six participants right now. Would you like to see how unizor works? Yes, I said not set. Okay, what I would do instead of using the there is a polling feature which if you haven't practiced it, it might be a little tricky. But what you might want to do is ask the question and then they can where the smiley face is under participants, they can they can give you a thumbs up this and you can see what they're doing or they could just type yes or no in the chat. I see. All right, so guys press could you enter yes if you would like to see something live on unizor.com You know what? Yes. I see yes. I see one yes. Anybody else? Now, Lucy, you indicated that the web tour might not be a good choice. Should I try it or what do you think? You can try it but just be aware that it may not work the way that you want it to. I see. So I have to enable first, right? So I have to first enable everybody, right? I don't think so. I think you just click on the globe, the web tour button. Yeah, I got this. Unizor.com and you want to make sure follow me is checked. Right. Well, I'm supposed to get the web page. I get it. Okay. I'm getting it. Okay. This is the front page exactly the same as on my slide. Do you see it? Okay. Okay. People see it. All right. What's interesting about this? I would like to present this as an example of the level of well, should I say difficulty? I don't know. Anyway, the level I would like actually to raise the knowledge of mathematics of my students. Let me go to trigonometry. Could you press the trigonometry under Math 14 first? And I will wait a little bit until you will finish it. Yeah, I did click on follow me. So you have changed screens, right? Everybody? Do you have to change screen to trigonometry? Could you chat? Yes. Yes. Okay. Now in the trigonometry you have three columns of different topics and I would like you to click on the right the rightmost column one, two, three, four. Fourth topic called trigonometric series. Could you do that? Okay. Trigonometric series. Now, this is an example of one of the lectures which I would like to basically to be, well, familiar with or on level with. And this is an example of one particular problem in the beginning I'm just talking about what exactly trigonometric series is and if you will scroll down the middle window where the notes are, you will see a little bit down the example. Now in the example I have actually two problems here. Some of cosines and some of sines. It's the series which is some of the trigonometric functions with different arguments. And the problem is basically to to come up with a formula which basically answers what exactly this sum of sines and cosines actually is. And the solution of this formula which is presented down below. By the way, this is a problem but I do present the full solution in notes as well as in the video presentation. Now, the solution involves complex numbers and I'm very excited with trying to explain that this is a very interesting example of how trigonometry is related to algebra of complex numbers and the sum of geometric progression. If you will follow the whole solution of this thing. So this is the level of knowledge which I would like students of the high school to be familiar with. How to synergize different things because the more you know, the more connections you see between the different things. I'm talking about philosophical issues right now. But this is actually the art of mathematics is about how to find these connections in this particular case between trigonometric series and complex numbers and the sum of the geometrical progression. This is one of the interesting examples of how the intelligent and truly analytical approach to problems actually might be. So that's just one of the examples. And let me go back to let me back to something else. Let's say geometry for instance. So I click geometry. I hope you have it followed as well. Now in the in the plane geometry section and by the way the 3D geometry solid geometry I did not really do anything. That remains to be done. So for instance you have let's say circles. Let's click on circles. And on the right of the screen you see there are many different lectures here. Now every one of them after the first one actually is the collection of a few different small theorems or problems or something like this. So if you will click on any one of those in theory I mean it should be done sequentially obviously for the person who is you know trying to do the whole educational process. But in any case what's interesting is let's say for instance I click on mini theorem 3. I have a bunch of theorems here. Any one of them is interesting by itself but they're small. So I combine them in one lecture and sometimes I specify the proof as well like in this particular case. Sometimes the proof is or a solution is in the video presentation. Well basically that's it. That's all I wanted actually to show you. I don't want to go through exams because that requires some signing in etc. It's too much. Anyway you are welcome to try Unizor.com. It's completely free as I was saying. No advertising and if you find it useful in any way just spread the knowledge that we need smart people and mathematics is the perfect tool to develop the intelligence and creativity. That's exactly what I like it was. Okay again if any questions I would be happy to answer. I think I've done this time. It's 5 to 1. Okay. Alright so I will wait for another 5 minutes and basically then I will close the recording. Thanks for applause Lucy. Okay Daniel I wish you luck and again if there is something which is not yet that on the screen just you know wait I'm actually doing a lot of things on this web page but it's enormous. The amount of material is really huge and the most importantly I would like to put as many problems as possible and that requires a certain amount of time obviously. And I also had a problem I just want to share with you if you are still with me I would like to share with you my problems with exams. You see I didn't want to give examples for exams which are kind of trivial. Like solve this particular equation and then multiple choice answer A, B, C, D or A or something. I wanted to do it a little bit more creatively for instance I asked the question solve this equation and solve that equation and find the roots which are common between them so I don't really give explicit answers so I was trying to be inventive as much as I could with exams. I've been trying to find the good method of teaching subjects on the web outside the box if you will but I don't know if this particular methodology Daniel which I was just explaining would satisfy your needs I don't know. I mean you can do a lot of things with this what's important is that the teacher can actually individually give assignments to the students in the group and then basically check exams or answer questions I think it's much more productive than basically giving one presentation to all the students strong one will probably be bored and the weak one will not understand it if you do it on the average level. Alright I'm glad you liked it. Alright we have still three minutes guys before I close the recording now what was interesting actually is if I would like to put proof of the theorem into the exam it's very difficult to do it in a nice fashion so what I did was I presented the theorem and then six different proofs and only one of them is correct and all other five had a little logical mistake and to tell you the truth to make an incorrect proof with a logical mistake however small was more difficult to prove it in reality okay I think it was informative I hope you liked it Lucy as well you are a boss around here right alright so I'm closing the recording and thanks very much for participating guys goodbye I have to really leave the room so I will be able to close the recording I still have just press the X in the right top corner I still have Daniel and Cheryl and okay Cheryl please leave the room pressing X in the top right corner