Title: The Story Collider presents Stories from Ohio State’s STEAM Factory

Date: November 18^th

Time: 7:00-8:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual, via CrowdCast

The STEAM Factory is pleased to partner with The Story Collider to bring you Stories from Ohio State’s STEAM Factory, a live (virtual) storytelling show featuring true, personal stories of sciences. Sign up for the event and tune in on Wednesday, November 18^th at 7:00 p.m. to hear stories told by three STEAM members.

Featured storytellers include:

• Cynthia Canan, Lecturer, Pharmacy Education & Innovation, College of Pharmacy
• Theodore Chao, Associate Professor, Mathematics Education, Department of Teaching & Learning, College of Education & Human Ecology
• Courtney Price, Education & Outreach Specialist, Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center, Center for Applied Plant Sciences, College of Arts & Sciences

This event is made possible thanks to funding from a BETHA 2020 grant.

Digital Mathematics Storytelling is a broad term used to describe ways that children can use videos, photographs, and audio to craft and share mathematically-rich narratives from their families and communities. These stories connect out-of-school mathematics with in-school mathematics and can increase students’ mathematics participation and confidence.

Digital Mathematics Storytelling revolves around telling a personal story, one that centers on a students’ experiences and insight. Think of  stories that you would share around a meal or family gathering, tales that can be told and retold. These stories often do not follow traditional three-act framework common in  Western media, but instead draw upon local community storytelling archetypes involving folktales and family histories.

Digital Mathematics Storytelling, therefore, does not involve just creating explanation videos of how one solved a mathematics problem based. Rather, Digital Mathematics Storytelling shows mathematics as it really exists within the community, showcasing not only mathematics, but the beauty of the community itself.

For example, the following figure shows the evolution of a digital mathematics story in a 4th-grade classroom. In Step 1, a 4th-grade child tells a story about measuring flour when making biscuits, making a surface-level connection to mathematics. The child tells a story about how she sees fractions when following cooking recipes. A community volunteer mentions that, in her own kitchen, she rarely measures ingredients, but cooks using experience and “feel” and wonders if the child’s family cooks similarly. The community member and other children suggest the story delve into how the child actually “lives” mathematics at home. A week later, in a second storycircle, the child reveals a new story about the rich mathematics she experiences with her mother and aunts when they cook a seven-dish family dinner together. The story details the intricate mathematics necessary to ration the ingredients and time so that all seven dishes are ready at exactly 6PM. The story details the body language, laughter, and kitchen shorthand that make up this mathematically rich space, positioning the mother and aunts as mathematical beings.