A recent research group lead by Lindsay Poirier, a computing student from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , brought to light ancient artefacts and patterns now reported to be aiding software teaching across the globe.
Lindsay says the study found that students enjoy creating designs based on artefacts from cultures outside of their own.
They have the opportunity to recreate a cultural artefact with their personal spin, which is a great way to promote cross-cultural understanding, she says.
The software, essential for teaching computing and algorithmic thinking, is developed based on designs derived from these cultures. However, it can be developed for anyone looking to use it anywhere in the world, she explains.
It simulates the design process used by kente cloth weavers by having students insert codelets to place “stitch” patterns on a grid.
Bill Babbitt, a graduate student in Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, did the entire coding for the application. The study was aided by ethnomathematician and professor at the institute Dr. Ron Eglash who says he has been teaching on the cultural software roots for some time now.
He says he first noticed mathematical design patterns in African culture while viewing aerial-photos taken of African communities. In the photos, he could see how the houses in the African villages were laid out in patterns. This according to him represented “perfect fractals.”
“”When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture much disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet,” Dr. Eglash said.
In particular, there have been design tools developed for African fractals (continent-wide), Mangbetu design (Democratic Republic of Congo), and Kente Cloth (Ghana).
Poirier adds that this style of learning has many benefits. First, she says the software promotes mathematical and computational thinking over rote memorization and instead of focusing on terms or definitions; the software applies the concepts to design work to help students gain a deeper understanding of how to use them.
“The second advantage lies on the creative production involved. Using this software, the students have the ability to create their own design artifacts, they can create their own graffiti design with the graffiti grapher and their own kente cloth design with the kente cloth software,” Poirier explained.
The software can be accessed at www.csdt.rpi.edu.
