Inter­na­tion­al Camp in Aca­dem­ic Gymnasium

The First Inter­na­tion­al Math­em­at­ic­al Camp «For­mula of Unity» was held on July 17–29, 2012 in St. Peters­burg in the Aca­dem­ic Gym­nas­i­um of St. Peters­burg State Uni­ver­sity. It was organ­ized by the St. Uni­ver­sity with the Euler Found­a­tion and the uni­ver­sit­ies of Seville and Val­lad­ol­id. The idea of the camp had begun with the agree­ment between the Euler Found­a­tion and the Insti­tute of Math­em­at­ics of the Uni­ver­sity of Seville on annu­al camps in Rus­sia and Spain start­ing in 2012.

70 school­chil­dren took part in the camp: 37 from Rus­sia, 30 from Spain, 2 from China and 1 from Croa­tia. Among the Rus­si­an par­ti­cipants, the major­ity (20) came from Kare­lia, and the rest rep­res­en­ted Krasnodar, Bavly (Tatarstan) and St. Peters­burg. Five of the Span­ish par­ti­cipants had stud­ied in the math school in Val­lad­ol­id, and the oth­er 25 kids had been selec­ted from the stu­dents of the ESTAL­MAT sys­tem in Andalusia. The age of the par­ti­cipants, with a few excep­tions, var­ied from 14 to 18 years. Par­ti­cipants were divided into 3 study groups based on their age and math­em­at­ics skills.

The cur­riculum (60 aca­dem­ic hours) included:

• solv­ing non-stand­ard problems;
• «math­em­at­ic­al battles», oth­er math­em­at­ic­al games and com­pet­i­tions that implied «col­lect­ive work» (col­lab­or­a­tion) of stu­dents (math­em­at­ic­al auc­tion, math­em­at­ic­al dom­ino, aba­cus, math­em­at­ic­al merry-go-round);
• Oral and writ­ten math­em­at­ic­al Olympiads;
• «Intro­duc­tion to the spe­cialty» — pop­u­lar lec­tures on vari­ous sec­tions of mod­ern math­em­at­ics, read by invited St. Peters­burg math­em­aticians. We will men­tion only a few lectures:
  • «What has proved Grigory Perelman»,
  • «Unsolv­able algorithmic problems»,
  • «Con­gru­ent numbers»,
  • «Inver­sion in geometry»,
  • «Rota­tions and the the­ory of relativity»,
  • «Intro­duc­tion to bioinformatics».

The classes were con­duc­ted by the tutors from the Youth Math­em­at­ic­al School at the St. Peters­burg State Uni­ver­sity and from the St. Peters­burg Cen­ter for Math­em­at­ic­al Edu­ca­tion at the Phys­ics and Math­em­at­ics Lyceum No. 239.

Extra­cur­ricular work on the basis of the meth­ods of col­lect­ive cre­at­ive edu­ca­tion was organ­ized accord­ing to dif­fer­ent age groups that did not coin­cide with the train­ing groups. This work was con­duc­ted by teach­ers and psy­cho­lo­gists — mem­bers of the ped­ago­gic­al group «The Change» of the Len­in­grad State Uni­ver­sity named after A. S. Pushkin. For the past 10 years they have main­tained and developed this technique.

We had such excur­sions as a sight­see­ing tour to St. Peters­burg, a vis­it to the Her­mit­age and the Peter and Paul Fort­ress, a boat trip along the rivers and canals of St. Peters­burg and an excur­sion to the foun­tains of Peterhof.