Working on Projects

I keep trying to find projects that are fun, creative and involve problem solving. You may have noticed the 8th iteration Sierpinski Triangle at the back of the room. It is soon to be a 9th iteration fractal which is 4 times larger than the one that has been up for the last week. It will go go from floor to ceiling in the room. What I've liked about this project is that everyone has contributed a small amount of work and several students have gone on to figure out how to make the larger iterations and continue to work on it just becasue they like doing it. This is the ultimate goal, to find things to do that students actually enjoy and are challenging problem solving activities.





Your class has had a tesselation project for the last few days. At first it seems like an easy problem, most of you have done something similar in prior years. What I've tried to do is leave it more open-ended so that there is something to solve rather than give you pre-set tiles. There are an infinite number of solutions and that is where art and math intersect, way out there in infinity. I'm curious about your thoughts about these type of projects. Would you like to try to work on the 10th iteration of the Sierpinski triangle? What other things would be interesting to work on?