Vermont Mathematics Initiative Course Registration: Summer 2021

This graduate level course is an introduction to cryptography and cryptanalysis. We will look at the history of secret communications, from simple substitution ciphers to public key cryptography, and the mathematical ideas underlying modern cryptography and secure data transfer. Cloud-based computational activities will enable participants to engage with the material, create their own encrypted messages, and attempt to decrypt their fellow students’ encrypted messages.

We will cover many of the following topics: substitution cipher, Vigenère cipher, affine cipher, Enigma machine, discrete logarithms and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, RSA and elliptic curves.

This course is designed for PreK-6th grade teachers, special educators, and math interventionists to deepen their mathematical and pedagogical content knowledge essential for teaching students who struggle with mathematics.
 
Mathematical Coherence in the Elementary Grades is developed with an eye on current teaching/learning research related to early number concepts, additive reasoning, multiplicative reasoning and fractions. These overarching and integrative mathematical “big ideas” form the foundation of PreK-Grade 6 mathematics. Teachers, special educators, and math interventionists will explore the mathematics content related to these topics, the intimate relationship among them, and the important pedagogical strategies and skills educational research suggests can have a strong impact on student learning. Emphasis is placed on teaching these important overarching mathematical ideas to students with special needs.

Both courses include 3 graduate credits from SNHU.