Dr. Veny Liu
Dr. Veny Liu, a UH West Oʻahu assistant professor of mathematics, spoke at the Pacific-Basin STEAM Teaching Conference held last month on Hawaiʻi County’s Kohala Coast, leading participants through a presentation on Exploding Dots, an innovative way to solve and teach mathematics.
About 1,500 participants attended the conference, which blends Science Fiction, with Culture, and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) content teaching.
Liu presented “Exploding Dots! A Mathematical Journey from Arithmetic to the Infinite,” or an exploration of the Exploding Dots model of teaching mathematics. Dr. Liu gave participants the chance to explore this innovative, National Science Foundation-funded model for solving mathematical problems from a visual and conceptual frame of reference.
Through use of the Exploding Dots methodology, students can be taken on a journey through grade school arithmetic, polynomial algebra, and infinite sums to unsolved problems baffling mathematicians to this day.
Liu and Dr. Laurie James, UH West Oʻahu Assistant Professor of Math Education, have previously presented Exploding Dots to Hawaii K-12 educators through the Math Teacher’s Circle at Hawaiʻi for the past two years.
The Pacific Basin STEAM Teaching Conference was held Sept. 13-16 as part of the HawaiiCon Science Fiction Convention. Dr. Richard Jones, UH West Oʻahu associate professor of education, also presented and served as co-chair of the conference.