Connecting Indigenous Cultural Practices and Lynx Coding: Dr. Ruth Beatty and Colleagues Receive Grant

As part of a $3,000,000 CanCode grant awarded to TakingITGlobal, Dr. Ruth Beatty (Associate Professor, Orillia campus) and her Indigenous Knowledges and Mathematics research colleagues will receive $75,000 over the next 2.5 years to continue to explore connections among Indigenous cultural practices, mathematics, and Lynx coding.

Lynx is a text-based coding program available in many languages including Anishinaabe, Mi’kmaw, Kanien’kéha, and Oji-Cree. For this project, the research team will collaborate with community partners to continue to explore how incorporating coding can help us to further understand Anishinaabe and Métis ways of knowing mathematics that both align with, and are different from, a Western European conception of mathematics.

To date, they have used Lynx as a way to investigate the structure of loom beading, circular medallions, and Métis finger weaving. The dynamic nature of the software affords students an opportunity to explore different mathematical concepts inherent in beadwork or weaving such as computational thinking, patterning and algebraic reasoning, proportional reasoning, and geometric transformations. The current project will extend these previous explorations, and also include other technologies such as birchbark basket making.