Dancing Euclidean Proofs https://vimeo.com/330107264?fl=pl&fe=sh
Dancing Braid into Being https://vimeo.com/269321443
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Week 4: Mathematics and the arts introduction -- resources, readings, viewing, activity*
Here is the link to our Week 4 resources, readings, viewing and activity (all on one sheet). Hope you enjoy it!
**Addition: Here is the description of the activity for this week. I realize that I must not have explained it clearly enough -- so here is my attempt to clarify!
(From this week's sheet:)
"The Bridges Math and Art conference has a gallery of mathematical art each year. The galleries from the 2010 to the 2025 Bridges conferences are linked here. Your task this week is to look at the art works from the Bridges conference assigned to you (see list below), and for each person to choose a different art work to look closely at, understand as deeply as you can, and to try to replicate in some way -- by sketching, building, weaving, sewing, beading or otherwise re-making a replica of the artwork. The aim of the replication is to gain a deeper understanding of the connection between the mathematics and the art -- so you will certainly not be judged on your abilities to make the art, but only on the connections you make between the artwork and the mathematical ideas and patterns!You will notice that some of the art pieces use mathematics that is accessible and familiar, and others use more esoteric mathematics. Be sure to choose an art piece where you can understand the math fairly clearly! At the same time, try to stretch yourself just a bit beyond the familiar too. The artists' statements will help you see the mathematics (and you can even try emailing the artists to ask them more about their pieces, if you have time)."
(Further clarification, I hope):
This means that, for this week's activity, each person should choose one work of mathematical art from the online Bridges art gallery you have been assigned. Choose something that appeals to you and seems accessible to you.
Take a look at the image of the art piece and at the artist's statement, which should explain a bit about the mathematics and the artwork. Think about it, and take a try at copying the artwork to get some understanding of it 'from the inside'. Note that I don't expect you to reproduce the piece of art exactly, but just to try making or sketching it in a roughed-in way, with the aim of understanding what it is and how it was designed using mathematics.
That is the activity for this week!
(For further clarification, please check out the film New math teachers riff on Kandinsky in Binary, an account of a group of three teacher candidates doing a similar exercise, with more time and in more depth, in relation to a Bridges 2016 work of art by Marc and Marion Chamberland.)
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Examples of culminating projects from a previous class
Hi everyone! Some students from a previous iteration of this course (from the online cohort) have kindly agreed to share their culminating projects with you as examples of what you can do.
Here are the links to the videos of their slides. Note that many of the projects also included lesson outlines, handouts, assessment rubrics, etc. -- these are the presentations only.
Diane Wiens: Acting Out a Problem (video of slide show)
Tamara Shand: Problem Posing Through Pretend Play (video of slide show) (Tamara remarks that she has just completed her Capstone Project on a closely related topic, and has taken these ideas even further now!)
Mike Wong and Megan Schollenberg: Multi-Sensory Social Justice Fair (video of slide show) --> EDIT: and here's another link that Mike sent in case you have any trouble acccessing the first one!
Hannah Nicholson: How Many Ways Can You Show a Repeating Pattern? (slides only available at this point, no video)
Shannan Downey & Courtney Fox: A Project in Scale (slides only at this point, no video)
Cailen Langille & Kelly Legere: A Deeper Understanding of Polynomial Function - Embodied Approaches (video of slide show)
Many thanks to the 2024 cohort group for their kindness in sharing these examples of excellent projects!
Details on the culminating course project
I hope that this outline will answer many of your questions -- and please feel free to ask about other aspects of the project that are not covered here.
I will also post some examples of successful culminating projects from a previous cohort, shared with the authors' permission.
Hope that this project will bring about new insights, ways to follow up on your own curiosity, and good collaborations with your class colleagues!
Week 3: Math outdoors -- Resources, readings, viewing, activity
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| (Norquay Food Forest in April. Spring will come!) |
Hello everyone! It's been a foggy, icy week, with far too much upsetting stuff in the international news. I hope you are coping well with all the contingencies of life and taking joy in the everyday beauty here!
Here is the link to our Week 3 resources, activity, viewing and readings. I hope you enjoy these!
Nem' ch ut'qul yu suwe's tuhw tu smuneem.
The activity sheet is linked here as well as in our Week 3 readings.
As chef Jared Qwustenuxun Williams often writes on his Facebook page:
Go outside and take children with you.Nem' ch ut'qul yu suwe's tuhw tu smuneem.
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Week 2 Readings
Here are our readings for this week:
a) Excerpts from Johannes Kepler (1611/ 2010) On the Six-pointed Snowflake: A New Year's Gift. Please read pp. 31 (starting with last paragraph) -- 65 (second paragraph), and note that these are short pages, only the odd-numbered pages, and there are illustrations.
This small and rather delightful book was a little "nothing" that Kepler gave as a gift to his wealthy patron on New Year's, 1611, just 413 years ago. It was originally written in Latin, and published in English translation in the 1960s and again in 2010.
I am interested in this book because small, everyday observations of the physical world (for example, looking at a snowflake that falls on his wool coat) inspires Kepler's imagination -- and those imaginings ended up as the foundations of whole new fields of mathematics, including close-packing problems and crystallography. Kepler playfully observes snowflakes, beehives, pomegranates, apples, frost on the window of a steam bath, and various polyhedra (cubes, triangular pyramids -- tetrahedra, and all the other shapes that Dungeons and Dragons dice come in, plus a few more!) It will be helpful for those reading this piece to actually look at some snowflakes, honeycomb, apples, pomegranates, etc. if they are available, and to construct models of the polyhedra (see Activities sheet).
This small and rather delightful book was a little "nothing" that Kepler gave as a gift to his wealthy patron on New Year's, 1611, just 413 years ago. It was originally written in Latin, and published in English translation in the 1960s and again in 2010.
I am interested in this book because small, everyday observations of the physical world (for example, looking at a snowflake that falls on his wool coat) inspires Kepler's imagination -- and those imaginings ended up as the foundations of whole new fields of mathematics, including close-packing problems and crystallography. Kepler playfully observes snowflakes, beehives, pomegranates, apples, frost on the window of a steam bath, and various polyhedra (cubes, triangular pyramids -- tetrahedra, and all the other shapes that Dungeons and Dragons dice come in, plus a few more!) It will be helpful for those reading this piece to actually look at some snowflakes, honeycomb, apples, pomegranates, etc. if they are available, and to construct models of the polyhedra (see Activities sheet).
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