The purpose of this blog is to share pictures, programs, thoughts and ideas related to the course Math Art with Computer taught in winter 2007/8 at Ithaca College. Please write a few words about yourself to share with other students so we will know you. We are forming a learning family!!
The outline for the course
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13 comments:
Hi,
I am Dani, 58 years old in thei body and scared and anxious about this course since I never had the experience before. I am from Israel and love Math Art and Life but also suffer from depressions.... But always survives. I hope you enjoy this course and learn a lot. Look forward to hear from you.
Hey there,
Happy new year! I am Jennifer DiCesare, 22 years old and have been studying art education at IC. This spring semester I will be student teaching in Dryden at both the elementary and high school. I am really excited to begin sharing my passion for art with students of all ages. I have generally disliked math in the past, but I am really interested in the See Logo program and anticipate a deeper understanding and appreciation for math art. I look forward to hearing from all of you!
This post is from Jill Marie who is both a student and a mentor for our course:
From Apprehension to Love
My first memory of math was the day in first grade that I was daydreaming (as usual). My very young teacher, who professed to my mother that I was her pet, but didn’t want to be seen showing favoritism, was often quite hard on me. I remember being “woken up” and seeing my math paper being torn up in front of my eyes. The first disruption in my energy system! (I’ll be talking about this extensively later.)
Second grade brought to me a teacher who spent the day yelling and forcing unbelievably repetitive, boring teaching methods. Her daily “Class News” (as if we didn’t know what the news of the day was) and my worn out green and red crayons were testaments to her insanity. Every time we did a math problem, we had to draw “balls” and color the ones in front of the equal sign red and the ones after them green. I guess this was her form of creative teaching.
If this weren’t bad enough, in third grade, I daydreamed my way through the daily board assignments and didn’t copy them down until my mother found out and became my nightly tutor after I got an E (equivalent to an F) for the first time. All I remember was her pushing me, yelling at me, my tearful responses, and my HATING math. I had no problem with addition and later multiplication (memorizing fit my right-brained pattern finding), but subtraction and division—horrors!
All through junior high and high school, I struggled with math. I always passed it (barely), but not without all the “extra help” my mother forced me to seek. According to the New York State regents regulations, I knew I only had to have three years of math and three years of science in my four years of high school work. I took my final year of math in my junior year, skipping science, and my final year of science in my senior year, skipping math. Junior year was intermediate algebra and trigonometry which I could not make hide nor hare out of (could not understand why we would spend half a school year working on a right triangle)! To top it off, one day, with six weeks left in the school year, my math teacher failed to come in. My French teacher found him dead. Poor lonely, sweet but totally non-inspirational man! We were caught up by another math teacher and I did well in the regents (as usual—at that point there wasn’t anything else to learn and I had finally mastered it).
Later, in my junior year of college, I took a “kiddie math” course, as it was called, to fulfill my math/science requirements for my drama/ speech/ English degree. The diminutive professor’s first order of business was to kick out all of the drama majors, for word had gotten around that this education course was also something even Mickey Mouse could pass without too much work. I held my ground, explaining that I also had an education minor and I was not budging from my seat. “Okay,” she replied and got down to teaching. At the end of the course, after reading many comic strips in the math book (B.C. was most common) and doing activities like making mobius strips, which I thought were really cool, I commented that other majors should be let into the course because it was so much fun. The teacher retorted, “Don’t you know you’ve been learning statistics and advanced calculus?” I had no idea, and it was at that moment, internally, that I knew I could learn to love math if only it were taught right.
When I was in my mid-thirties and in graduate school in Elmira for a reading degree (finally using my diploma, which had essentially sat in a file cabinet for 15 years), I took a reading/math assistant job in a very open public school in Ithaca to help me financially. I learned to help kids work with such “manipulatives” as Dean’s blocks and other materials and saw that hands-on/visual training really made sense. Finally, I understood the principle of “trading” in subtraction (we had called it “borrowing” and “take away” and had learned no concepts whatsoever regarding the “whys”). As a corollary, had I known that trigonometry was useful for astronomy, pipe fitters, and architects, that in itself would have given me some purpose and understanding of this obsession with a right triangle.
Still waiting for the moment for math to actually come alive for me, I met Dani last spring through a mutual acquaintance. He introduced himself (if I remember it right) as a right-brained math professor. Now we were talking! After five minutes, he asked me to collaborate with him on different projects to get children to love and understand math.
So here we are and I am loving math! When I create those beautiful, colorful pieces in SeeLogo and really understand the math behind it, it moves me to loud exclamations of delight and tears. I’m looking forward to taking this course both as a student and a mentor for other students. More on energy later…
Hi,
My name is Komal Patel and I am really excited to be taking this course. I'm not the strongest math student, but I believe that my effort is what makes a difference. I'm a student at Case Western Reserve University currently and thought this course sounded interesting, so I signed up for it. So here's to a great few weeks!
Hey everyone! My name's Mike Unis and I am excited to be TA'ing this course. It's going to be a lot of fun, Dani is a great professor! So let's get started!
Hey everyone :) I'm Ashley, and I'm a senior here at Ithaca. I'm a Therapeutic Recreation major and I'm also on the gymnastics team. I personally have avoided math until now just for the reason that I'm not very strong in math, but then again I've had quite an adventure through out the years experiencing different math teachers who some how made me dislike math more and more each time. So, I'm really looking forward to taking this class because computers and art are both an interest of mine and since these two things are combined with the math aspect I think I'll be able to finally enjoy math for once :)
Hi I am Philicia and I am a Junior English major at Ithaca College from Washington D.C. I learned about this course through an email I received when I was studying abroad in Rome and it really perked my interest. In Rome I took a drawing class which really opened my eyes to my own capabilities. I have never been an artist (my brother is a graphic design major and has always been the artist in the family) but I learned with a a little practice and some confidence you can achieve more than you originally thought you could. Besides not being an artist I am not very good at math either but I am just applying what I learned in my drawing class to other parts in my life like math, so hopefully I can boost my self confidence in mathematics as well as continuing with art.
Hi, I am Katie and I'm 22. My passions in life are horses, family and friends. I am excited for this course because of the enthusiasm Dani portrays for his work. I plan to have fun with SeeLogo and learn more about math than just through numbers.
Hello everyone,
I'm Caitlin Harte, currently a sophomore at Ithaca - and still an Exploratory student (although hopefully by the end of this month I will be a Writing major / Photo minor). I'm from the Hudson Valley region in NY - a beautiful place to grow up, but I'm from that typical upstate small town that I can't wait to move away from.
I'm on the field hockey team at Ithaca, I love soccer (World Cup 2010 woo!) and adore snowboarding. I love reading, I love film (watching, theory, learning production, etc.), and music is a huge part of my life (listening and playing - the Flute 12 years, and beginning piano this semester!) And of course we all have our problems… I think I could write a book on each: my family, drugs depression, individuals I know…
But, as I said, we all have our problems, so I’d like to focus on the positives.
---
I've never been much of a math person, not because of difficulty.. but because of any teacher's ability to hold my attention to it. I've always felt that people learn math to become engineers/architects (etc) or math teachers, none of which I will be. All I know so far is that I want to travel all over the world and experience as much as I can, documenting my experiences through photography and writing, perhaps a little film (my first two major trips being World Cup 2010 in South Africa and the Burning Man Festival in Nevada…) and finally publishing my work one day. I also want to work with people for the betterment our world (for a healthier Earth, and with people to improve living conditions everywhere)… I know I’m sounding all over the place … but that’s who I am and hopefully will be for the rest of my life!
Anyway - I’m so glad I found this course; a new means of applying mathematical logic in a way that is applicable to my own interests. I’m excited and hopefully these next two weeks will be a success.
I guess that was a mouthful.
I look forward to working with everyone… good luck to all.
Passions and Dreams Assignment:
I realized that my original post didn't really cover what was asked in the assignment. So here's the rest of it. I'm a pretty ambitious person. But there are times where I don't actually know what it is that I want to do with myself. I'm currently a pre-med, political science and evolutionary biology major, with minors in both chemistry and dance. I think my majors indicate that I'm interested in a variety of different things. I get easily excited by the possibility of creating real change, and discouraged even more easily when things fail.
My long term goals start with getting an MD, possibly a JD, and then working in health policy for a few years. I think there's a lot of changes that need to be made, and who better than yourself to start? I think after that I may just want to practice clinical medicine somewhere. I'm not exactly sure where, perhaps with doctors without borders, or maybe some other NPO.
So those are my long term goals. But for the present, I'm currently setting up a free HIV/AIDS testing and counseling clinic in Kenya with about 6 other students from my university. We've got the testing kits and the actual clinic fully funded for about 18 months and while some of us are already there setting it up, the rest of us will be there this summer to train the physicians and help set up.
Hi, I'm Liz and I'm a junior English major at IC. I plan on teaching once I get my master's degree, which is something I've wanted to do since I was 6 years old. I've never really been good at math, but Dani has helped out a lot since we met in the fall. I'm looking forward to working with everyone!
Hi,
I am Odaro, I am 21 years old I am young and excited and living life to the fullest. I am currently living out of brooklyn, new york. I am computer informational systems and a senior so I am looking far to graduation. I don't have a job yet but I am looking for one.
So if you have a job for me give, just let me know lol
:)
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