Creative Mind through Art of Mathematics
Zor Shekhtman
Founder of Unizor Education,
http://www.unizor.com
zor@unizor.com
I'd like to bring your attention to an educational Web site UNIZOR.COM. On this site users will find an advanced course of Mathematics for high school students called "Math 4 Teens", almost completed course "Physics 4 Teens" (as of the beginning of 2023, it's about 90% complete) and some Civics courses, contributed to the site. Unizor can be used in any classroom, but especially in a flipped classroom environment, for home schooling or self-study. The site is totally free, no advertising, no string attached, even signing in is optional, if students just want to study by themselves.

"Math 4 Teens" and "Physics 4 Teens" are the main courses on this site.

My first encounter with high school mathematics in New York was through my son's education. Considering my own high level mathematical education many years ago back in Russia and 40 years of professional experience in the financial industry in New York, I was quite interested in how mathematics is taught in schools. To my disappointment, I found the system of education directed more towards developing of math skills (like, to accomplish this, do that) instead of developing students' intelligence, analytical thinking and creativity, which my own education was based upon. Not denying the necessity of having certain math skills, I believe the system based only on "how to" approach is an excellent tool to teach a profession, not mathematics, which is an art and a 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 (a) math skills learned in school are rarely needed in real life (how many times in your life did you have to solve quadratic equation?) and (b) this system of education causes loss of students' interest since most of them perfectly understand that they would never need these skills, which, in turn, negatively affects their study in general, students learn material just to pass the test and then happily forget it.


Purpose of Unizor

The purpose of Unizor is derived from the purpose of math education in school, which I view, primarily, as a tool to develop students' intelligence, creativity, analytical thinking and, arguably, to get smarter. The most important part of Unizor approach to education is solving problems and proving theorems. In addition, it allows for parents or supervisors to be fully informed and, if they wish, control an educational process of their students. It also allows teachers, willing to experiment with a flipped classroom approach, to delegate some of their work to this Web site, while concentrating on helping students with whatever problem they might have with theorems, properties, solution and other course components. Unizor attempts to replace traditional fact-based, memorization-centered course of mathematics taught in many high schools with a tool to develop students' minds. Students might think about math for their brains as they think about gym for their muscles. As gym and physical exercises are needed for physical development, solving Math problems and proving its theorems are needed for development of their minds, which will definitely result in an ability to solve real life problems that need new, previously unknown solutions.


Unizor Participants

There are three categories of Unizor participants: (a) students as main laborers in the educational process, whose job is to study, (b) optionally, their parents or supervisors as responsible adults capable to control the educational process and performing a managerial functions and (c) providers of educational materials. Functions can be delegated. For instance, supervisory function can be performed by a group teacher, who checks all the students' exam scores, marks courses as completed and enrolls students into new topics. But, logically speaking, functions of control and providing educational materials are separate and implemented via paradigms of "parent/supervisor" and "teacher". It should be stated up front that many Unizor users are unregistered students, who are only listening to lectures to learn something new, including problem solving techniques, and do not participate in the educational process it facilitates, they might or might not take exams, they do not have anybody's supervision or adviser. This is fine, but it should be noted that Unizor is more than just a collection of theoretical and practical lectures and notes, it is created with a purpose to establish an educational process, self-guided or supervised.


Unizor Contents

The contents are provided by Unizor teachers. The site currently has a few courses − advanced high school level course of Mathematics "Math 4 Teens", advanced high school level Physics course "Physics 4 Teens", Civics course "US Law 4 Teens" (contributed by Jesse Brogan) and a couple of others. Unizor is designed with expansion in mind, so other teachers can contribute educational material with proper authorization. The educational material is hierarchically organized in courses (like "Math 4 Teens" or "Physics 4 Teens") divided into independent subjects (like "Algebra", "Geometry", "Electromagnetism" etc.), subdivided into topics (like "Complex Numbers", "Triangles", "Magnetic Field" etc.) and individual lectures ("Complex Numbers − Two Roots", "Right Triangles", "Lorentz Force" etc. ) It includes video-recorded lectures (including lectures on solving numerous problems related to theoretical material), detailed notes for each lecture in a textbook style and many exams allowing students or their parents/supervisors to quantify how well any particular topic was learned.


Math 4 Teens

This is a main Unizor course available on http://www.unizor.com.
The course includes hundreds of lectures on the following subjects:
Math Concepts,
Algebra,
Geometry,
Trigonometry,
Vectors,
Matrices,
Combinatorics,
Probability,
Statistics and
Calculus.
We view the value of this course in its numerous problems, solved and left for exams, as well as in a more rigorous approach to mathematics with an attempt not to make any statement without a proof.


Physics 4 Teens

This course of Physics heavily depends on Math (especially, Vectors and Calculus) and attempts to as rigorously as possible present the state of classical Physics before revolutionary developments of Relativity Theory and Quantum Theory.
The following subjects are covered:
Mechanics,
Energy,
Electromagnetism,
Waves,
Atoms and
Units in Physics.


Here is a 5 min introductory video: Unizor in 5 min
and another 5 min video that introduces the basic functionality of the UNIZOR.COM site: Unizor - How to