Hello everyone,

My apologies for a late post, but here is the link to my Prezi from the SyMETRI meeting on February 10th. I’m excited to say that I have submitted my article for publication, so the waiting game has started! In the article, I consider an interview with a nine year-old student, Ashley, as she works through the puzzle “How Many Towers?” Of particular interest to me after the interviewing process, was Ashley’s tendency to organize her constructed towers into “families” which corresponded to her method of building larger towers from smaller ones. Throughout the interview, I observed Ashley’s organizational strategies prompting new discoveries, while conversely, new discoveries prompted new organizational strategies.

http://prezi.com/eivnchgvgpry/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Myron Medina presents his interests for his doctoral research :

My current research interest looks at how Belizean cultural artifacts (coral carvings, Mayan paintings, music etc.) can be used as mediums to embody and visualize certain mathematical patterns (e.g. symmetry, fractals). A forest school will be opening at Caye Caulker, an ecological island off the coast of Belize, that will experiment with outdoor/ecological learning. Since mathematics education in Belize is often teaching to the test, this presents an opportunity to incorporate the notion of embodied knowledge via local cultural practices within the mathematics curriculum. Since it is important to engage the senses in learning, some broad questions are: In what ways can these resources be used to teach and learn math? What would students take away from these experiences?

Terms: embodiment, visualization, ethnomathematics, cultural ecology