I let my students doodle in class.
Some students just need to move their hands in some way or another, and so instead of them tapping a pencil or ruler on their desk, I tell them to doodle.
Then last week I was introduced to the queen of math doodles, Vi Hart… from one of my students, no less. If you read math blogs, then you have probably come across her work already. I, however, do not get to read as much as I would like, and so I am thankful that I have an aspiring doodler in one of my classes who is, apparently, more informed than me.
The first video of hers that I watched was ‘Infinity Elephants’. Yes, you will have to listen to her quips about boring math class, but it is worth it to see her doodle and hear her accompanying explanations. (And despite our best planning and intentions, I am sure that we, the collective math teachers, have managed to bore some of our students at one point or another.)
She has four doodling videos on her blog – Infinity Elephants, Binary Trees, Stars, and Snakes and Graphs. I have watched all four videos, and enjoyed all of them. One of the extra perks for me were the little snippets from the “The Little Prince“, which you would only notice if you have actually read the book.
When I googled Hart to find out more about her, I came across a video that she had created with references to the original Flatland story. This one, titled “Mӧbius Story – Wind and Mr. Ug”, takes place along a Mӧbius strip – a surface with only one side and one boundary component. Check out her blog and watch her doodle, then come back to see her story along a Mӧbius strip. It is worth a few moments of your time.
