We spent a wonderful afternoon in the math activities area of the Alice in Wonderland Exhibit. We supplemented the activities in place with an iPad demo of the Alphabet Cipher, called ABCipher courtesy of “Blue from Tricochet[.com]”, a talented Austin area coder who created ABCipher and put it in iTunes specifically for this exhibit. Visitors could choose a codeword from Lewis Carroll’s work like gryphon or jabberwocky, and see how the cipher uses that word to create a custom code of their name. Our guest facilitator was Dr. William McKenna, PhD who has an expertise in facilitating interactions between learners. We also had mini versions of the 64=65 puzzle pieces for participants to take home and a mini and maxi sized coin trick puzzle for visitors to try. Working together, asking questions and figuring it out we all had fun.

We did provide a handout that gives some information about the activities. You can get it here.