If you can read this, thank a Grandmother.
An ode to grandmothers, the essential workers whose sewing skills kept so many of us safe in 2020.
Designing the Future World: A Thinking with Things course
My undergraduate class, Designing the Future World, described in a longer-than-usual post.
Math Anxiety and Me: A tale of lost opportunity
What if we could have a truly engaging, inquiry-based, accessible math curriculum in our schools? Here’s my story.
Richard Feynman, Argyle Socks, and Women’s Invisible Skills
Richard Feynman was astonished to learn that women who knit Argyle socks were doing real math.
The Problem with “Rigor”
When you try to change how things are done in the academy, you are often tripped up by discussions of “rigor.” Let’s try to unpack this.
Making Thinking Visible: A favorite story from my classroom
A memorable moment from my classroom, where using things to think with (flip chart paper) led a graduate student to a breakthrough.
Why Thinking With Things?
What sense can we make of the phrase “thinking with things?” On the face of it, it seems naive, even “primitive.” We think with our brains, of course, not with things. Or do we?
How it started for me
I’ve always been a maker, but it my making was always walled off from my approach to the classroom by an impermeable barrier that was part habit, part misconception, and part stigma.
Thinking with crocheted hyperbolic planes
We are surrounded, of course, by things to think with. But one of my favorites is a bit obscure: the crocheted hyperbolic plane. A hyperbolic plane is a mathematical object.