New Client Love: TCPS

We love our clients and we think you will too! The Child’s Primary School (TCPS) is celebrating more than 30 years in the San Diego community, and they have some great stories to tell. We’re working with them to refresh their external messaging, website (design thanks to MCM) and preparing for media and partnership outreach in the fall. Check out their new website we just launched this week!

We also asked Jim Price, executive director at TCPS, a few questions to get to know them better:

• What was a standout moment for you in the 2013/2014 school year?

Winning First Place in the Middle School Robotics Division at the San Diego Mini-Maker Faire andparticipating as an exhibitor and conference speaker at the STEAMConnect Conference.

• What initiatives are TCPS teachers and students excited about for this coming school year?

Our Classroom Without Walls Initiative, our growing involvement with STEAMConnect and the Small Schools Coalition.

•  What do you look forward to most about working with KDR PR?

Giving more people in San Diego the opportunity to learn more about our school, our innovative teachers, and our awesome kids.

My journey through Art of Science Learning

On July 24, I was surrounded by sunshine, music, and the enthusiastic voices of hundreds of innovators in art and science filling the Plaza de Panama and the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa. There, educators, parents, children and passersby gathered to share ideas and learn from each other at the Play Day for Educators hosted by the Art of Science Learning (AoSL).

Incubator for Innovation:

At the heart of Play Day, teams from AoSL’s San Diego Incubator for Innovation presented their projects in progress and received feedback and support from the community. All nine teams will present their final projects on October 18th. Stay tuned for details!

Here are a few conversations that stood out to me:

• Waterstock: Many attendees considered the question “What would you do with the last water balloon?” giving answers like, “Drink it!” “Definitely feed it to my gold fish,” “I’d find a way to make more with it,” and “Use it to water a fruit tree.”
• Aqua Diao: After describing a prototype that converts the humidity in the air into drinking water using electrical currents, a 12-year-old enthralled by the prototype and the battery it works from asked, “Does that help steady the voltage?” and “How does that sensor work?” and other technical questions.
• Trash to Paradise: After walking through the plans and a mini prototype for filtration system made from recycled plastics and wetland plants to locally convert black water into gray water at a Tijuana church site a young woman echoed, “So you’re filtering water with plastics and soil instead of heavy machinery? That’s fantastic!”

Mini-Workshops:

In addition to the San Diego Incubator Teams, schools and organizations from around the county provided mini workshops to showcase the benefits of applying art to STEM education for even the earliest learners. Here’s what I heard:

• Feaster STEAM Charter: as Kim Richards, co-founder of STEAMConnect, struggled to make a pyramid from 4 pieces of connected circles, the Feaster engineering teacher pointed out, “I saw a kid earlier today solve the puzzle in one move from where you have it right now.” With a look of surprise and one twist, Kim solved the puzzle exclaiming, “I didn’t even see it at first!” Another Feaster team member chimed in, “Kids have an easier time with this the younger they are. As we get older we get so set in our ways, it’s hard to let go and imagine possibilities.”
• BuildTopia: Children used basic engineering design handbooks and recycled materials to model their own utopia. One little boy grabbed my hand and said excitedly, “I made it look like leaves fell out of the tree!” as he showed me his eco-friendly utopia complete with elevator tree house and duck pond.
• Rokenbok: Attracting by far the most and smallest kids, the Kid*Spark by Rokenbok play area held cars and lego-like bridges and buildings. A father watching his children guide Rokenbok cars over bridges mumbled to his wife, “This is fascinating. They’re all so calm.” As a little boy was being pulled away from a dump truck, he asked his mother disappointedly, “We need to go?”

  Meanwhile young-at-heart adults marveled over 3D printed pieces that interfaced perfectly with Rokenbok’s.

• CRMSE: While creating a 3D drawing, anamorphic projection, a 4th and 5th grade math teacher shook his head saying, “There’s not enough art in math, my students would probably love something like this.” Pausing a moment, he asked the representative from the USD Theoretical Math extension, “Do you think fourth or fifth graders could handle this?” who replied “I do this with preschoolers and adults. They’ll do great!”

-By Romy Beigel, KDR PR summer 2014 intern & president of Team Paradox, the FIRST Robotics team at San Dieguito Academy

Client Snapshot: CRMSE

We partnered with the Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education (CRMSE) at San Diego State University in May 2013 to increase their visibility in San Diego. We set out to showcase their more than 25 years of robust research, curriculum development, and service to the math and science education community.

After our nine month collaboration, we look back on our work with the team and outcomes achieved.

Client Snapshot: Exhibit Ambush

Ambush Events debuted its signature art & fashion event, Exhibit Ambush, in San Diego in 2011. With the second event gearing up for this October, KDR PR founder Kim Richards reflects back on her experience working on the project in the first installment of “Client Snapshot.”

Math + Art = Match Made in Heaven

I was never much of a math person. Well, I thought I was until I hit pre-calculus in college. Nothing seemed to resonate with me, so I gave it up…academically. I use math every single day of my life and yet somehow I feel completely resistant to it. That is until I attended a brown bag lecture called “When Mathematical Instruments Become Art Instruments” at CRMSE, the Center for Research in Math and Science Education at San Diego State University, a new client of KDR PR.

I was inspired by the creative potential in both teaching and learning math. The professors seek reflection and a more in depth understanding of the concepts from the students, and the students as a result are expressive and able to apply the learnings to their own lives.

Here are a couple of examples:

1. Making math creative. Students use a math instrument called Alberti’s Window to peer through an eyehole through a vertical drawing pane to an object on the other side. Then they draw projected images of what they see on the pane, their “projective sketch,” an exercise inprojectivegeometry. The shape and size will vary depending on the angle they’re looking from and which side of the glass the object is on. Students are asked to use their imagination to figure out the shape and size before starting.
2. Making math beautiful. Students are then asked to create a cluster of shapes using math software called Geometer’s Sketchpad based on their projective sketch. The resulting shapes are cut into stencils and then airbrushed into beautiful art pieces. One student who is a dancer wanted to create spirals because it reminded her of dance, so she found a creative way to use a projection to create another one to get the effect she wanted. Reflecting on her piece, she said she had never thought of her dance from a math perspective, and is now opening up her creativity in new ways and incorporating math elements into her dance.

What I loved hearing in the student testimonials is that art is no longer intimidating to them. That we’re all artists and mathematicians, we just may not have uncovered it yet. I say we all step back for a moment to figure out what we “think” we can’t do and then go try it out. It’ll be fun!