What we learned: Mecklenburg County Environmental Education Manager Alice Chambers liked the materials she saw on a visit with colleagues at the Austin Nature and Science Center. She and her staff are interested in presenting mathematics concepts as part of their new STEM initiative. They would like to offer more and they are interested in collaborating with us by testing
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Dr. Jennifer Mann Austin checked into MakeATX to laser cut some wood!
Dr. Jennifer Mann Austin came by the MakeATX laser shop today. She’s already taken laser basics training class and is making some models for her University of Texas M302 math class for liberal arts majors and other non-math majors. There’s a super cool Pythagorean Puzzle and she’s cutting some Golden Ratio Calipers and a few other goodies.
Workshop: Connecting Visitors to Meaning Through Interpretive Exhibits.
We attended a Workshop yesterday sponsored by the Texas Historical Commission. Topic: Connecting Visitors to Meaning Through Interpretive Exhibits. We did some reading, writing, discussing, collaborating, production of a mock exhibit and presentations as well. We learned a lot about this kind of exhibit design in a museum context and found many parallels to our own ideas of teaching and
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Austin Nature and Science Center Sunclock Layout – Dry Run
It was dry and hot as well. In 90 + mid June heat we went out to the Austin Nature and Science Center. We needed midday sun to find true north using the plumb line contraption you see below. It worked really well. We etched a line in the wood at the base so we’d have a 90 degree cross
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Dionysium Show
What we learned: The Dionysium Show is a quarterly evening entertainment variety program in the style of a club devoted to intellectual topics that takes place in a movie theater that serves food and drink. Challenge was to do meaningful math engaging both individuals and the group who are in a theater sitting in the dark, unable to write notes
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Math Field Trip – Texas State History Museum – La Belle
These images from the The Texas State History Museum show the La Belle hull on permanent display in the ground floor gallery and a Nocturnal found among other artifacts when the ship was recovered. Our field trip for 75 7th graders focused on the tools
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Austin Maker Faire 2017
We got to talk with makers and math enthusiasts of all types, ages and interests. Our showcase includes math made with 3d printers, epilog lasers, an iPad app, leather, and plain old paper. Its fun to see it all together. Our table included several kinds of calipers and golden ratio examples, Lewis Carroll exhibit activities, La Belle 1600s navigation tools, and the
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More Time at the Austin Nature and Science Center
We are set today to preview some new models. We are hoping despite the rain to show some visitors the stereographic projection of a sphere. Its a really good demo on how the distortion happens with Maps. Why it happens has to do with mapping for ease of navigation. We are working on explaining this in connection with La Belle,
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Austin Museum Partnership Educator Night
We brought a variety of materials and most importantly three of our UTeach Spring Interns to Educator night sponsored by the Austin Museum Partnership, and hosted at the LBJ Library — Fancy. We had some great conversations with teachers and with museum staff about adding math to museum offerings and about opportunities to take Math Field Trips!