Reflection on the Presentation.

Overall, I think our presentation went really well. Everyone in our group did a great job with the parts we had planned. I introduced the original artwork and explained the mathematics behind it. Medha talked about our design process and how we created our own piece. Josh explained the area calculations in detail. I also really liked how our interactive activities worked out. Our classmates were very supportive and actively participated in almost everything we asked them to do. The last activity, where they matched the different regions with the correct areas, worked especially well. At first, some people seemed a little confused about what they were supposed to do, which made me nervous for a moment. But after we gave them some guidance, they quickly understood the idea and started thinking in the direction we had hoped. It was really nice to see something we had spent so much time planning actually work in the classroom.

Before starting this project, though, I was very resistant to it. I have never thought of myself as an artistic person, and I am really not good at drawing or making art. So when I first saw that we had to recreate and extend a piece of mathematical art, I felt a lot of pressure. Even two days before our presentation, I was still trying to fully understand how the original artwork was constructed how one curved kite could be rotated and enlarged again and again to create the final spiral. Luckily, my group members were very supportive. We gave each other space to work on the parts we were more comfortable with, while still helping each other throughout the whole process. As the project developed step by step, I started to realize that mathematical art was not as scary as I had imagined. More importantly, I realized you don't have to be amazing at either mathematics or art to create something interesting. Even fairly simple mathematical ideas can produce something beautiful and surprising. Seeing the other groups' presentations made this even clearer to me. So many of their pieces amazed me, especially how they took mathematical ideas and pushed the original artwork in completely new directions. It made me see more clearly that mathematics really is all around us. In my future classroom, I would definitely like to try an activity like this. Students could enjoy creating and experimenting, while still learning and applying mathematics at the same time. I think that combination can make mathematics feel much more alive.