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I think I got a struggling high schooler hooked on cryptography today (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/dull_mens_club@lemmy.world
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It’s the end of May, school is basically over. The week where it’s mostly catching up on missing assignments - many students already off on summer vacation and the frequent interruptions from things like graduation prep etc…

Student of mine that has struggled with math all year comes up to talk to me about internet ARGs, and I start talking about cryptography with him. I end up printing out a little packet for him working him through introductory stuff.

I wasn’t sure how well he’d take to it - was pretty bad about turning in assignments all year, not good at being focused - but lo and behold, he was working on it at lunch and I ended up helping him some more with it.

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[–] 40 points 5 months ago (1 child)

Reminds me of this kid I knew in high school who didn’t do well in physics until we got to electrical stuff, which he recognized from working on car stereos.

Gotta reach them where they’re at

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 5 months ago

    I want to learn more about cars, specifically to try to reach this type of kid.

    I had one car obsessed kid that I sorta won over with “let’s try to model car parts with geometric solids and think about volume as it pertains to things like gas tanks,” but I don’t know enough about cars to really make the kinds of deep connections I know could be there.

    I have a good rapport with anime and gamer teens usually. Minecraft is a godsend, because almost everyone has played it and you can tie so much math and science shit into it. I’ve learned more from this YouTube channel than I did from my fossil fuel funded undergrad geology classes.

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    • [–] 10 points 5 months ago

    This makes my heart happy. You may have just become that teacher in his life who gave him the lightbulb moment he needed of "wait, math is useful for stuff that actually interests me?!" <3

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    [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    This makes me really happy, I'm glad you shared this :)

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    [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Very cool, thank you for doing what you do. Care to share that introductory packet?

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    [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (3 children)

    Give them a challenge, Cistercian Numerals...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistercian_numerals

    Now, challenge them to upgrade Cistercian Decimal to Cistercian Hexadecimal...

    I promise, it's totally doable, and even backwards compatible with OG Cistercian Numerals. I've already done it before, but I'm not gonna provide my cheat sheet here.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Oh that’s delightful.

    I watched some videos on medieval math education recently, and I’ve been wanting to create a unit or something themed around what you’d learn as a medieval student.

    I emphasize history a lot more than any math teacher I’ve known, but I think it can be effective. The Pythagorean theorem is absolutely critical to memorize and understand, and it can be very fun to go into all the Pythagoras cult stuff.

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