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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Moving Patterns

Anyone familiar with this blog will know I have three main avocations in math and math ed: using tech for visualizing, combining math with art, and doing math through playing games. And things that combine any two of those things, wowee.

But here is one! Malke Rosenfeld has developed a math game that builds off of her depth of experience exploring math through movement, in particular dance. I had the amazing experience of being in her workshop first for my first Twitter Math Camp. My dance partner was the phenomenal Melynee Negelee, who is the moving force behind #elemmathchat. That was where I first got to meet Glenn Waddell and Edmund Harriss in person, too.

Since then, I've brought in Malke to work with my preservice teachers, present at the university, asked her to speak at our local conference Math in Action. I always get more out of each time, and the preservice teachers are very positive. I've tried to incorporate some of what I've learned from her by including embodied mathematics in all levels of courses and even trying a (non-professional dancer) version of the Math in Your Feet work with preservice teachers and kids.

The game is a learning game that develops your understanding of the possible moves and combinations as you play. There's a lot of rich mathematics to recognize and do as you problem solve, recognize and develop patterns, see transformations in three dimensions and look for and create symmetry. She has put so much work and development into the ideas behind the game and the look and play of the cards as well. For myself, knowing a lot of the math already, it still is engaging as you try to get your body to do that, and there was plenty of math to think about. Kids and college learners have deep insights and good connections.

Find out more at Malke's game site: http://movingpatternsgame.com/ or at the kickstarter https://bit.ly/MPKickstarter. And I love how Malke has set it up so that schools get a copy of the game when you get a copy.



Bonus #mathcomic in honor of Moving Patterns.


Everybody dance now!