Math Fables.

Imagine you're a child. You can't wait to go outside and play, but first, you have to tackle that wall of equations sitting on your desk. You give it a shot, but your result doesn't match the one in the book. Meanwhile, you hear the birds in the backyard singing, you briefly look outside the window and you see the sun shining on a tree. The tree has blossoms and you can smell the fresh air coming in from the window. But the homework is due for tomorrow, so you turn your head back down to your book. You eventually spot your mistake: an '8' mysteriously turned into a '6' during your first attempt. Frustrated, you start over, but the result is still off. The numbers slowly seem to lose their meaning, and you begin questioning everything: 'Am I really adding fractions correctly?' you wonder. Oops, another error! Finally, your results match, and you mutter, 'Math is so boring. I hate it.' Now, you rush outside to play.

Yet, mathematics follows you. It's in the petals of the flowers you're examining, with the number of petals in each ring following the Fibonacci sequence. Trigonometric functions seem to play along with the birds' chirping. How many ways can you turn that rock to make the same shape?

Bring fables into math education and dissemination.

While I understand that the grind of learning mathematics might be necessary, I believe we should strive to present each subject in the most engaging way possible. Not only because engaged students learn better, but also because mathematics is a series of metaphors that start with fundamental operations. Consider how adding 3 to 2 can be visualized as either adding 3 balls to a container with 2 or moving along the number line. These are different ways to grasp the same concept. The more perspectives we have, the more each operation becomes real. Eventually, manipulating various mathematical objects, from summing integers to abstract math, can transport you to a different world in your mind. Therefore, being creative in teaching results in a better understanding of the subject because it makes mathematics more tangible. In this continuously updated article, I want to share my experiences as a Math Educator, along with some ideas and future projects for some engaging math activities and resources for other math teachers or divulgators.

Some Mathables

Ok so what is a Mathables?

Mathable: A Mathable is a narration based activity, where a mathematical concept is a main tool in the story.

The definition is rather broad, a Mathable may come in a written form, or be a recital acted by the teachers, or be similar to dungeons or dragons. The defining characteristic it's how the story is used to introduce a world in which the mathematical concept becomes some kind of magic the student can use to progress. This I believe makes the student why math is beautiful: sometimes it can be applied in unexpected ways, turning something otherwise incomprehensible to understandable.
Here are some examples:

Isola di Baal

One of the first ones I came across was Isola di Baal and it blew my mind. It's a treasure hunt based on logic connectives. But what I loved about it was the story it was rapped around: a philosophy quest to understand: "Why is there something rather than nothing?". I lead various group of kids (and adults) through this activity and the difference between the engagement respect to traditional teaching is evident. Children are drawn in by the story, and as character in it they want to use math as a tool to keep it going. This is a text based adventure but it really shows the potential of story telling used in teaching. If you know italian I suggest you give a look at the link!

Flatlandia

Inspired by this I created an other text based mathematical adventure (in italian) set in Flatlandia about Graph Theory. In the Google Doc you can also find a link to an other Graph Theory activity I found online whitch is really well structured, although not story based.

Following this story telling path I am currently creating a Mathematical Adventure to do outdoor, where I aim to leave the text based format and move instead to acting based to make the experience more immersive for kids, which may otherwise get lost in all the text reading part. I'll update this blogpost when it's complete :)

A note on Piano Nazionale delle Lauree Scientifiche (PLS)

PLS is a national intervention plan to help students in the choice of a university path by organizing laboratories for each subject. There are many laboratories organized by university teacher and many of them go in the direction of what I introduced in the first paragraph: teach math in a more engaging way, although the activities are thought of only for high school students and not smaller kids. Sadly the various laboratories of PLS are not well organized in one single website, and a lot of them are not easily available. Still consider giving it a look!

Other teaching resources.

In this section I'll go over some math activities of problems resources I found. I suspect it will become a bit of a links dump but I'll try to keep it well organized. This is the link to the Mathpetizer google drive event I used to organize. You can find the "menus" which was the list of mathematical activities, problems and tabletop games that whoever came to the event could engage in. The activities where lead by me and the other organizers of the event. The problems where supposed to be tackled alone, although we were always there to help out.

Math activities and adventures

With "activities" I mean that they should be lead by a teacher and cannot done by the student alone. With "Math adveture" I mean that the activity is in someway story based. I also included the links found in the previous paragraphs for convenience.

Math problems.

Math Riddles subreddit hosts math problems of all levels

Other lists of resources.

There are also other sites with various ideas about math education it might be interesting to check out!

Centro Interuniversitatio per la comunicazione e l'apprendimento informale della matematica.

My experience in Mathematics Dissemination

In my second year of university I start organizing a Math divulgation event called Mathpetizer. From the name you may be guessing that the idea was to try luring people with food (appetizer) and make them enjoy math, and you would be right. You may also be thinking that putting "Math" in the name would cancel the luring effect of the food part, if so you would be correct again, but what can I say, I was young and stupid. Either way that was the beginning of my math dissemination journey. I organized Mathpetizer for a couple of years, and some shorter activities at a scientific festival called Indiscienza. Now I am more towards organizing specific experiences for classes in schools.