Teaching Math History In The Digital Age

One of the benefits of being a part of Generation X is laying claim to having grown up as a kid in the greatest period of Saturday Morning Cartoons — the 70’s. It was not only breakfast we devoured growing up, we also had an insatiable appetite for everything that was animated. For many of us, our first introduction to rich and compelling history came with the early 70’s show The Wonderful Stories of Professor Kitzel. The producers of the show were clever enough to give us bite-sized morsels of historical events — under 5 minutes.
The format of each episode, of which one hundred and six were produced in all, was generally an opening discussion by the professor introducing the subject. He would then take the viewer to his time machine, pull a lever and the first series of drawings and commentary related to the subject would begin. Halfway through the story, the professor would interrupt the commentary to make some humorous remark, before returning to the narrative with an invitation to “Let’s see what happened next.” Each episode concluded with some humorous closing sequence.
It was magical. Learning history — any history — was made accessible to kids and their intrinsic and burgeoning curiosities of the world.
Fast forward almost half-a-century, and the idea of history — specifically, math history — is gaining significant momentum in terms of incorporating it into math education and classroom lessons. The big question, however, is…how?
Times have changed. Children still have the same curiosities, its just that they are often requiring different portals to explore them. Generally speaking, they desire experiences that are digitally interactive, harnessing all the unique learning that is happening in the 21st century — social, visual, tactile, and experiential.
While the history of mathematics as an integral element has generally been a desert in the fields of math education, it did get a fairly famous and prominent treatment, even before Professor Kitzel was making general history cool. In 1959, Disney produced a 27 minute animated feature called Donald in Mathmagic Land, in which Pythagoras makes a guest appearance.

What is interesting is that Donald initially rebukes the idea of exploring Mathmagic Land — which is probably most kids today — until he starts to see some of the connections between math and music. So, where are we today? Where is there evidence of attempting to make rich mathematical connections/explorations with kids?
After 19 years of being in the classroom, I left teaching in 2013. I no longer felt that what I was supposed to teach, how I was supposed to teach and why I was supposed to teach had any currency left for me. Fortunately, I now work for a creative and fun math digital resource company, Scolab, that not only reflects and reaffirms my reasons for being a math teacher, they also are the only company that integrates math history as one of the key features of their platform. They do it through something called Missions. There are currently 10 in total, and students can only go on these Missions if they have demonstrated mastery of core math concepts, which are represented by “gold stars”. So, really, the reward for learning math concepts is to explore math history in a gamefied environment!

It feels a bit awkward to take a fanboy position when you work for the company, but The Missions are so well-written and challenging that I feel obliged to let people know about this gem of a digital resource. While there are many elements I like about The Missions — Mr. Haze(the nemesis), the challenging questions, the colourful animations, etc. — my favorite part is the inclusion of notable women in the Missions narrative, Ada Lovelace and Sophie Germain.

Professor Kitzel and his time machine hooked me onto the stories of Captain Bligh, Robert Perry, The Oracle at Delphi, etc when I was not even ten years-old. Today, my life has kind of come full circle. I get to consult on math history that involves a grandfather-type figure(Alfred Bowtie) and a time machine.
Storytelling has always been a powerful way to learn. The mediums might have changed, but great stories have remained constant. There are literally hundreds of wonderfully engaging stories of mathematicians that students — and teachers — need to hear to truly appreciate the human richness of mathematics. Mathematics needs context and relevance. But, it also needs to respond to the sensibilities and interest of students.
Fortunately, I don’t have to go far to find a resource that inspires students to not only learn mathematics, but to learn mathematics with a strong, upfront presence of its rich and beautiful history.
