Final Project Draft

 Here is the link to my Draft Project EDCP 553 Project Gill

Week 9 (Mathematics & traditional and contemporary practices of making and doing )

Reading Reflection:

Excerpts from Sharon Kallis, Common Threads: Weaving Community Through Collaborative Eco-Art 

The Chapter titled “Building for the Change from Ground Up” is from the Book Common Threads : Weaving Community through Collaborative Eco-art “ by Sharon Kallis. This reading is about promoting local production of goods and services that we so heavily rely on external resources, industry - all dictated by purchasing power.

STOP 

The act of learning to make for personally use what we have previously purchased is perhaps the most fundamentally important gift we can give to ourselves.

This statement really resonated with me. In today’s fast paced lives, we depend so much on the consumer industry. Most recent example being when we decorated our new home with market bought expensive wall hangings. Recently my mom had gone back to India, and she brought 3-4 of the art work pieces that she had made herself. We framed those and have replaced our “expensive wall hangings” with mom’s art work. The beauty of it, and the fact that we are able to relate more with it, and mom can talk about her work gives so much peace, satisfaction and just brings a new life to the walls of our home.

STOP

It is really important to be able to step outside of the consumer lifestyle….if you think about how a lot of kids have grown up the last few decades, not having any agency outside shopping…wanting something, getting it, being disappointed and then looking for ht next thing…..whereas when you make something…you share the skills for making something with others and people value that –its an incredible thing, there is a real worthiness to that.

Again, this really struck the chord with me as these days as a parent I am feeling frustrated with how quickly the kids lose interest in a toy and want another new one. Reflecting back to my childhood, we dint have many toys- and found value and interest in the select few ones we had. The point shared here above that when you share the skills for making something with other - there is a real worthiness to it. My husband & I recently had a debate about that he wants to get a outdoor swing and play set  to be placed in the backyard (worth $1500)....I am against this type of setting. He says the kids should have something to play with outdoors. But now I am thinking what can we create with them outdoors - involve them in the process. Starting at very basic, I think we will start by getting kids to grow their own mini vegetable garden in the backyard….something they will take care of, and take proud in watching the crops grow. 

Activity

For this week’s activity I tried doing the 5-strand braid with my daughter’s hair, it just turned out to be a big mess and my daughter dint have patience to sit through another of my tries. So we stuck to our standard three strand braid. As we do the three strand braid on a regular basis, I dont have to think about the process that goes behind it. My husband on the other hand has never tried doing braids. So for this activity I guided him through the process of doing a three strand braid. Finally after many tries, he did get the hang of it…here is a pic of his attempt of braiding my hair. He described the whole experience as a very unique way in which our hands and brain are working together to make a beautiful pattern.

Week 8 (Mathematics & fibre arts, fashion arts and culinary arts )

 Reading Reflection:

 Gwen Fisher (Bridges 2015) Highly unlikely triangles bead weaving

In this paper Gwen Fisher has described their work on using impossible triangles and its variations to create a series of sculptures with beads using a bead weaving technique. The beaded art objects generated surfaces that twist like Mobius bands around the objects. 

STOP - What are impossible triangles

This is an unfamiliar subject to me, So I took some time to understand the concept of impossible triangles. As per Fisher(2015), impossible triangles are two dimensional drawings that represent three straight beams with square cross sections and the beams appear to meet at right angle. An impossible triangle is only impossible to be constructed in 3d (assuming edges are straight and connections are right angles. While in two dimensional drawing, they are not actually impossible, they just seem to twist in an impossible way. Below is an image for impossible triangles:

STOP - Beading the highly unlikely triangle

Fisher states that a beaded version of an impossible triangle is very much possible because of flexibility of beadwork. In the beadwork, the twist allows the impossible triangle to be constructed in 3d. 

This was very interesting to me as it doesnot appear very intuitive. The figure below shoes the highly unlikely triangles in three sizes:

Fisher showed in detail about how to convert an impossible triangle into a beaded version. As depicted in the image below, they talked about imagining the beams as little cubes. And then place beads on each line segment of the cube so that the hole of the bead is aligned with the line segment. 

Then beads are woven together with the beaded cubic right angle weave (I didn't fully understand this technique just by looking at the images)

Overall, the work as described in the article at first glance was very confusing and beyond comprehension for me. Upon reading multiple times and deeper analysis, I got some basic idea of the complex beading technique that was involved in creating beaded versions of impossible triangles.

In my teaching practice, I have only used beading in making bracelets to show repeated patterns in terms of repeated rows and columns and have also used beading for helping to learn area and perimeter. 

I have not used beading for anything more complex or anything remotely similar to constructing impossible triangles.

Question - In what context have you used beading in mathematics classrooms? 

Activity

 

For the activity this week, I tried shoe lacing activity. I chose this activity as  lately I have observed that I am not very good at tying my daughter’s skating shoe laces. My toddlers have been wearing the Velcro shoes, and my older one recently started her skating lessons, and I have been helping her tie the shoelaces  but I have noticed that in the just rush of getting her ready of skating lessons, I have been ending up with either uneven length of laces ends or too short of ends. This morning I tried to tie her laces with a different method, but in the end I had to come back to criss cross tying as that's the only technique I have ever used myself and seems very intuitive. Any other method seems very confusing. I would definitely be going back to the video as this is something I would like to improve on especially to make the lace tying more clean and neat looking.