Triple Helix

Future planning is the most enjoyable part of my volunteering at Hackett Middle School for the GK-12 grant. It’s something I have done elsewhere, and I usually refer to it as ‘plotting’. The thought process usually goes somewhat like “What unusual scheme can we come up with that will benefit the students, interest them in STEM, and foster learning that ‘will just happen’.

First, I think should be a presentation about my experience over the summer working with students in Africa. That really was quite an experience, and should be fairly easy to do. We can discuss the Ayeduase school, visiting Gabriel the Adinkra maker, and the Kente cloth weavers. To top it all off with a ‘bang’, I can add some slides from our side trip to the monkey sanctuary. I have lots of props for the talk and it should be fun.

The very exciting thing about our software is the opportunity for a conversation it presents for specific math and computer science concepts. During my time in Ghana, there were many opportunities for these conversations. The joy of sharing knowledge is a great ‘high’, but so is seeing those concepts successfully reinforced by software one has helped to develop.

The Culturally Situated Design Tool ‘Cornrow Curves’ uses the mathematical concepts of rotation, dilation, translation, and reflection as the student works to create a cornrow braid on the screen. In addition, the student ‘bumps into’ the concepts of Cartesian Coordinate Plane, x and y axis, and what percentage means during their work. As I have mentioned before, I felt certain that our students at the Ayeduasse school had leaned these concepts completely, but finding the words to describe them was difficult for them. Thus began the quest to find appropriate terms in Tui (their native language) to help them out…

Ntwaho = Rotation

Ntwaso = Traslation

Ketowa / Keseye = Dilation (roughly bigger / smaller)

Adane = Reflection

Nkabom = Iterate

When we began our work with the Kente Cloth simulation, it immediately occurred to me that we had an opportunity for a conversation that repeated and reinforced the geometry concepts taught through Cornrows. In addition we added appropriate computer science terms such as likening a computer program to a cooking recipe or ‘Atosodee’.

There were so many exciting aspects of our trip to Ghana and working with these students, finding ways to bridge gaps in understanding certainly were wonderful highlights in a great adventure.

In many ways I’m very happy to be going home to my family, but I also feel sad at leaving so many wonderful people I have met on this trip. The teachers and students at the Ayeduase school, the undergraduate students here doing research, and even all the guest house staff that went out of their way to make us all feel welcome will all be dearly missed.

We started out this morning at 5:00 am, uncertain of just what difficulties we would run into on the return trip to Accra, but as it turned out, we took a different road than we used on our arrival. Thankfully, our driver Felix had found a different way back as no one was looking forward to the prospect of traversing the road that was under construction for large stretches (hours at a time). This different way had many twists and turns, but was mostly paved!

We arrived in Accra about 1 and met up with Mei who will be attending RPI Case in the fall. We had a very nice time as she skillfully showed us around town, visiting the market, a colonial house, a slave prison, and other sites including the ‘traditional medicine’ market. The history of the Ashanti says that the first king called a golden stool down from heaven and has been used by each king ever since. The picture above shows the Ghanaian capitol has been designed in the shape of a golden stool.

After a marvelous dinner at Mei’s house, we set out for the airport to get checked in for our 11:15 pm flight home, and so ends an experience of a lifetime.