This one-day workshop was organized by the Texas Valley Communities Foundation
and the Texas Graduate Center, which is affiliated with the
Math for teaching
degree program at the Harvard extension school.
Thanks to Mary Alice Reyes and Adriana Lopez from the Texas Graduate Center for arranging and
organizing that (and dinner).
It was an inspiring workshop with amazing contributions from the class which I still have to digest. There were almost 30 teachers present. (Photos by the center: pic1,
pic2,
pic3.)
Some handouts are to the right. In the wake of the preparations, I also mixed in a bit of algebra in my
current passion for geometry on graphs.
Leonard Euler who lived from 1707 to 1783 is the grand master of Pedagogy
in the realm of algebra. Euler also invented graph theory (Koenigsberg
Bridge Problem), seeds of topology (Euler characteristic etc) and so many other
things. He is probably the most inspiring mathematician ever, not only because of
his theorems and formulas v-e+f=2,exp(i π)+1=0,1+1/4+1/9+1/16+...=π2/6 etc),
but also because of his outreach and his passion for making it
accessible. Euler walked the talk, like many of the teachers who throw their energy into the
noble cause of teaching. Euler's contributions to algebra pedagogy was not only in
writing his textbook in Algebra but producing a gold standard in clarity which is hard to
surpass. It is one of the most successful textbooks of all times.
Update 9/24/2022:
The textbook is quite small
as can be seen on this page from 2006.
Some blog notes about addition and
multiplication, on networks.
This topic got mentioned at the end of this workshop illustrating that basic discoveries in arithmetic
are not over (we have barely scratched the surface!)
The picture to the right was taken in my
Office.
It is part of this panorama.
To the left (click for more photos), we see the "Fraction lab".
Some photos from the workshop. I hope to link later to more, done by the graduate center.
There is also great food in the Texas valley. Here is a photo from a restaurant (thanks to Claudia
from the Texas Valley Communities Foundation) for that lunch:
The Renaissance hotel
Some pictures from an early morning run:
And from the McAllen airport featuring a Brother Wright type flyer (a replica close to Flyer III from 1905 or Model AB from 1910)
And while flying back, the magical Chicago O'Hare Airport tunnel connecting B and C.
Oliver Knill, January, 20 2017,