442 Reflection

Hello twins.

The following is a reflection on my experiences during EDCP 442.

This course really opened my eyes to two major themes. One is how fascinating it can be to explore the often-overlooked history of the major ideas present in modern mathematics. I had not explored this really at all during my time as a student or teacher. I can see the value in enriching one's understanding and providing a greater appreciation that it can provide. I would like to implement more history into my lessons by picking spots to integrate them into certain topics. I really enjoyed it when we explored ancient methods as well and got to practice solving problems using algorithms or techniques that they would have used around that time. It was fascinating to explore the ingenuity of ancient civilizations and to see authentic demonstrations of their calculations during that time. I believe students can definitely benefit from seeing these demos. The other major takeaway was how much math has been influenced by other cultures. Math textbooks and resources tend to mostly focus on Western contributions and white male figures. I enjoyed reading how these mathematical ideas were discovered at different times across the world and how cultures had their own unique ways of looking at a problem. During our class presentations, it was clear that this idea had been received by all the students in the class. We often focused on incorporating the contributions of multiple cultures on our math topic and recognizing how ideas stemmed from a variety of figures. 

Thanks for reading,

Josh

Art History Reflection

 Hello twins.

The following is a reflection on my art history project on Hypatia of Alexandria.

I was really glad with the topic I had chosen for this presentation. I wanted to cover a female mathematician and enjoyed researching Hypatia's colourful life. From the start, I knew the sort of project that would work best as artwork. The portrait using ellipses was a laborious endeavour just due to the sheer size of the file. Reaching 1800 equations in geogebra was very challenging for my computer and I had lots of setbacks with my project lagging and not saving properly. But I persevered to the finish line because I was convinced it'd be worth finishing. I was happy with how the finished project turned out and it received a positive reaction during my presentation. During my presentation, I gave a quick overview of the major events in Hypatia's life without emphasizing her infamous demise. I was glad to find out that she had been a teacher as well and some of the principles she instilled in her "classrooms". I would like to explore more about other women in ancient academia and their stories from different parts of the world.

Thanks for reading,

Josh

Art History Project

Hello twins.

Here is the link for my presentation on Hypatia of Alexandria.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vwS-G2nOsEP0SHdNQWbT-GbLkIUvUC3eofVKYcpwpuc/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for reading,

Josh