Neill Cochran House Museum is hosting the Pythagorean Tables! They are newly installed September 5 2017 and we can’t wait to play on them.
What we did last summer!
Major accomplishments Summer 2017: Maker Faire – large public event, large number of interactions. Delivered Seminars/Conference Sessions: UTeach Alumni Conference – Playground and Presentation, at Texas State History Museum: Delivered Seminar for Social Studies Teachers, Seminar for AISD Math Teachers, Gained a spot on the Bullock’s guide for Museum Programming options Math Circle Seminar for MS Teachers – assist UT
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Human Sunclock complete at 11:30 CDT Friday August 11!
Where? At the Austin Nature and Science Center! We are very excited to see the Sunclock finished. We were practicing for the layout June 19th and its been almost two hot sweaty months of laser cutting molds for the calendar stones, of assisting Nature Center Exhibits Director Josh Ransom with cement pours and false starts getting the dates just right.
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Production – Calipers for Math Teachers
This summer we are making math materials for teachers as well as museums. These caliper kits are going to a math teacher who saw our presentation at a the UTeach conference. She’s very excited to use them with her class this year.
Making the Math
Quan, Abdul, Payton and Marcus are making math this summer! Whether gluing chess pieces, laser cutting calipers and rabbits, etching acrylic for a custom cement mold, assembling displays or even assisting Nature and Science Center Exhibits Director Josh Ransom (pictured in blue) to mix and pour concrete, its all part of the job.
Golden Ratio Materials arrived at NC Mecklenburg Parks and Recreation Education Department
We are pleased to hear that the materials we made for the North Carolina’s Mecklenberg Department of Parks and Recreation have arrived safely. We customized our caliper display with a North Carolina Crayfish, provided a set of Golden Ratio proportional calipers, Giant Calipers, the arm measure, zebra, ant, Golden Ratio mirrors with signage, and 1:1 and 1:2 calipers. We are
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Mecklenburg County, NC: Parks and Recreation
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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