I remember my first encounter with a fractal: It was a Mandelbrot shown to me by my older brother - it was colourful, animated, and ever-evolving! Best of all, he created it by inputting the function calculations onto a DOS computer (🖥️ age-telling). It was so beautiful and inspiring! Until now I still have not gained any further understanding of the function calculations involved. However, this ignorance coupled with a sheer appreciation of its beauty has planted a seed to inspire more youngsters and hopefully with a bit more context.
In a community where there is a large population practising Hinduism, Shintoism, or Buddhism, I naively thought just the mentioning of mandala would appear approachable to the learners (ignorance strike II). It turned out that most youngsters had no idea what a mandala is. However, they are:
- More familiar with 'rangoli' than 'mandala.' #CulturalPractice
- More excited about 'making' than 'discovering.' #DoIt
- More skilled at digital manipulation than using the drawing set. #iPadEdu
In a nutshell
In short, a fractal is a pattern that repeats forever: you can take a snippet of any part of the pattern to resemble its whole. Based on this concept, the main objectives for this experience are:
- Recognising fractals: learners able to recognise a fractal.
- Creating fractal shapes: learners able to apply repeated patterns.
- Pattern making referencing fractals: learners able to place shapes together and describe the features of the pattern.
The concepts
Staying true to Learning by Doing, we started with making repeated shapes on the iPad and discuss transformation. From a more abstract and mathmatical approach to observing and capturing nature, realising that maths is a way to explain the natural world...
[Repeated patterns made by students]
The doing
And art is a way to represent the natural world. Designing and drawing a mandala allows the learners to apply shape transformation while striving for accuracy and attention to detail. A template for mandala can be downloaded here.
[Using a compass for measurement]
[Reference to flora designs]
The playing
An extension exercise is to make the mandala design come alive by adding animation. This helps to solidify learners understanding of sequence and repetition. Here are some proud clips by learners using FlipaClip on iPad.
Ivy
Rayhan
Rayhan Take 2
Love it. Do it!
