First of all, I must thank the organizers for this very special chess conference. We had some of the greatest minds in this area coming together to share knowledge and passion. It was well organized and the hospitality was wonderful. Secondly, the attendees and fellow lecturers were magnificent. I finally got to meet many other chess people from around that world whom I have only corresponded with online.
But most important of all, I think monumental steps were taken in the past few days. Many new ideas and information were introduced.
My husband’s offer to create a central “Chess Education and Research” website has been accepted by the organizers and well received by the group. He bought the domain http://www.chessresearchonline.com/ and the goal is to place the “Chess Education and Research” materials from everyone on this site. It will be available to everyone worldwide and information can be searched by subject, name of author and other key words.
In the past, when one needs information about these areas, they must Google everything and sometimes it is very hard to locate the critical information. Now, this problem will be solved and it will be updated frequently to include all the latest information and data. This will help the entire chess community. We now have the strength of a big strong group to pitch to the board of education, sponsors or whoever we need to convince about the power of chess and education. This is a completely free service for everyone and we are happy to take on this task and unite everyone for the best interest of chess and education.
The other idea that he suggested and it was also very well received by everyone is that the next conference should be webcast. It means that countless chess educators and interested parties can watch the conference LIVE from around the world.
I will write more about this in my ChessCafe.com column next week.
Awesome ideas! It will help us on a local level. Thank you!
All the news from Scotland is inspiring. We are building the international links that were a central part of our ‘Mt Alexander Chess/Numeracy’ program in the formative years 2004 -2006.We desired to create a community of schools using the web for communication and tournament purposes bringing kids from different cultures together through chess.
It is great to see so much endeavour, volunteerism and good will from so many quarters coming to fruition.
A special mention must be made of the supportiveness and professionalism of our Mt Alexander School Cluster class teachers and the wonderful assitance they have given the chess tutoring team.
The key thing for us is chess and maths and building resilience in kids.
In our Maths component we refer to building “Mental Muscles’ chess problem solving and call it “GEOMETRIC PROBLEM SOLVING’. With the grave yard (adding piece values) we make a rule 25 points ahead or first to get 35 points for a win to encourage the kids to work their graveyard numeracy, and encourage them to engage in regrouping and cancellation.
We teach kids to make decisions about their positions by looking at the relationship between Pawn Structure, Space, Lead in Development, Initiative and Material (Graveyards) and material on the board.
We have our class policy of no quitters on the chess board, or in life, and in modest way nuture a positive attitude by building resilience through game playing and competition? Kids constantly tell me they learn from chess thinking is fun.
We emphasise in the classroom: ‘Responsibility for Decision Making’ (you make a move you live with the consequences), Resilience-stickability and persistence furthers, (there are no quitters in our chess class culture), Sportspersonship (PBs-personal bests-they are only competing against themselves to be as good as they can be for themselves and this helps them to be better citizens), Peer Tutoring (at the end of the game they are encouraged to go over the games and reflect on their decision making), Numeracy/Cancellation, Impulse Control, Visualisation Training, and Concentration.
Kids engage in thinking intensely and decision making in the heat of the chess tournament battle. Please don’t forget chess is a kinetic/spatial hands on game which keeps giving many low performing boys a life at school which they never had before.
We am inspired by everything the chess fraternity is doing in Scotland and we extend our appreciation from the Victorian Goldfields and the Mt Alexander School Cluster to all those involved in the conference, and particularly to all the speakers! Congratulations on the success you have all created at the conference-brilliant!!!
Our team in Aberdeen has expressed it great pleasure in meeting Susan Polgar and we want to thank her for all she is doing to build a global chess culture and make chess an integral part of the Western education system.
Regards Harry
Regards Harry
Was Paul Truong at the conference? There’s no picture posted here of him there.
Another troll in the last post. Must be Sloan or Lafferty again.
What a great shot of the conference dinner – the candlelight is beautiful. To answer the poster September 1 at 4:50 AM, it’s obvious that it’s Paul Truong who is taking the photographs of this event, just as he has taken hundreds of photographs of Susan at other events all around the world.
The new website you/Paul will be creating for this venture will be a great resource and central gathering point for all future research and reports, as well as providing a useful contact point for teachers, volunteers and lay persons interested in advancing the cause of chess in schools and learning more about chess’ educational benefits for young people.
Once again, kudos to you and Paul for stepping up to the plate.
Janet Newton
http://www.goddesschess.com
As one of the attendees of the conference – there to listen mainly, I would like to thank everyone concerned with getting the conference up and running. I’ve learned so much at both a high and low level, but now starts the real work in getting things moving in my little corner of the world. One thing I had failed to grasp before getting there was how truly global this event was. Also a number of delegates/speakers were not from the chess world which gave the conference extra kudos.
Several things that really stood out for me were high level items such as the scarcity of real evidence supporting traditional claims that Chess helps you at school by aiding powers of concentration, improving maths skills etc; the idea that chess should be used to increase a childs feeling about him/herself (whole child); and low level ideas such as the way the aussie guys have integrated chess into schoollife by mapping chess related tasks onto specific items on the curriculum – including the graveyard game. Some of the above may seem ‘obvious’ to some but sometimes people can overlook the obvious.
One event not mentioned so far (it wasn’t on the timetable) happened after the dinner where a mini league of nations decsended on a pub in Aberdeen (I forget the name but the home of Aberdeen CC). The welcome given by the locals was brilliant and lots of fun was had until closing time, although my memory of exactly when that was is a bit blurred thanks to Drew from Ulster.
All in all a memorable event.