As part of one of my grants, we had four area teachers come to campus for the summer to design instructional materials for their technology classes. We had a great time with them. One of the perks has been keeping in contact with them.
This week Megan (one of our RET teachers, who actually is Greg's age) asked me to come to her technology class and present an ILM to her seventh graders. We talked about graph coloring - a computer science abstraction for conflict resolution. (See csilm.usu.edu/Browse Resources/CSILM Activities/Graph Coloring). What darling kids! I had so much fun with them. Megan is an amazing teacher. It is great to watch her in action.
The challenge is this. Draw any kind of map that requires five colors to color such that areas which share a border (of more than one point) can't be the same color. After they had struggled a while, I told them that it was impossible. They would never be able to do it. Well, that didn't stop them. The whole hour I had kids handing me a map saying, "This one takes five colors. I know it does." Find a minimal coloring isn't always easy, so I would tell them, "I'm going to take home your map. If I can't color it in four colors, I'll come be a seventh grader and you can take my place teaching classes at the university - as you are obviously smarter than I am."
Wouldn't that be fun? I would love going back to the seventh grade for a week or so. Those were the good old days! I've often wished I could let someone take my place for a while.
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