Images of Integration

Slice and dice: that's how I think about the calculus topic of Integration - take something complicated, slice into increasingly fine slices, then put it all back together. In my quest to encourage my students to see this theme in the wonderful world around them, here is a selection of images I used this term to help show the idea, generously made available by people around the world through a Creative Commons License on Flickr. If you're taking great photographs - think about sharing them under Creative Commons - a wonderful resource for teachers to help inspire students.

Bay St, St Louis Bridge by Alaskan Dude on Flickr

La Agora, be el.manu on Flickr

L'Hemisferic by el.manu on Flickr

Tower by timtom, on Flickr

Untitled, by SymoO, on Flickr

The idea of looking for visual representations inspired one of my students to take a photo of the magnificent Neuroscience Research Australia under construction across the road from our school - which just screams at me "Area under the curve!" every time I walk past it.

Neuroscience Research Australia building 2012 - under construction. Photo by J Yu - used with permission.

This is part 3 of a series of posts on teaching Integration.
Part 2:  Exploring Inequality - an entry point to calculus

Art photography in the maths classroom - thanks to flickr

So much of the mathematics content we teach appears to many students to be fairly dry on the surface - we hope we bring them on the journey to see its wonder, but there is nothing like a great visual to create interest and start a quality discussion. Recently I tapped into an amazing resource: flickr photos provided under Creative Commons licenses.  There are thousands of high quality inspirational photographs available just waiting to go into a mathematics lesson.

For the topic "The Quadratic Function", water was my visual theme. I use just one of these images for each lesson - we start the lesson with a full screen, high definition version and then I use smaller versions to create a visual link for transitions between lesson activities.

All images under Creative Commons. Click on the photograph for details.

For the topic "Locus and the Parabola" I blended an astronomy theme (think: parabolic reflectors) and more abstract designs:

All images under Creative Commons. Click on the photograph for details.

These images look spectacular in high definition projected onto a screen in class - and give an opportunity to engage in some broader discussion about the application of mathematics, and the relationships between art, science and mathematics. Interesting to see students also noticing the use of Creative Commons - a chance to model good practice and spread the CC message.

Because the creators of these images generously put their work 'into the commons',  I can use them in my own works and then in turn, share those works with other teachers without any copyright constraints - hopefully helping students in many other classes.

Finding Creative Commons licensed content on flickr
Use the Advanced Search feature:

scroll down and select these boxes:

I also select "Interesting" which tends to return richer images. When using the image, make a CC attribution and provide a link back to flickr page. I also like to leave a thank you comment to author. And thank you flickr for coming to the CC party. Now if only Google would make CC searching available on its main image search page! I believe it is there - just hidden - and life is too short to look for hidden options.