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Steinberg and Stacy Watts, assistant education director at the Great Lakes Science Center, explore a minimal surface from the Beyond Numbers exhibit. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERTA SHEARS
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Daniel Steinberg: Oberlin's Connection with Cleveland Mathematics Education
Daniel Steinberg
PHOTOGRAPH BY LINDA GRASHOFF
DECEMBER 2, 1999--Of all the members of the Oberlin College faculty, perhaps best plugged into Cleveland is Daniel Steinberg, visiting assistant professor in the mathematics department and the Computer Science Program. Steinberg did his graduate work at Case Western Reserve University. And over the years, he has been a Cleveland radio announcer and a chef in a Cleveland restaurant. Today his many ties are with Cleveland's educational community.
Steinberg, a lifelong resident of the Cleveland area, is a consultant for the Great Lakes Science Center, chair of the Cleveland Collaborative for Mathematics Education, and a member of the board of the Cleveland Education Fund. Oberlin students in and out of Steinberg's classes have benefited from his Cleveland connections.
Steinberg has been consultant for mathematics at the Great Lakes Science Center for many years, since well before construction of the center's new building next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As mathematics consultant, Steinberg prepares materials and makes presentations that help Cleveland mathematics teachers and their students interpret the mathematics in the center's exhibits.
The current blockbuster exhibit at the center concerns Egypt and includes a popular Imax film, Mysteries of Egypt.The movie reveals a rich culture that featured amazing achievements in science and engineering. The foundation for the Egyptian accomplishments was an ingenious way to represent numbers in order to calculate with them. The Egyptians used several systems. They multiplied much like computers do today, by repeated doubling and adding, and they had clever ways of calculating with fractions. For the science center, Steinberg has prepared a curriculum, tied to Ohio state mathematics proficiencies, on Egyptian arithmetic. Cleveland-area schools are also using Steinberg's curriculum.
Beyond Numbers,another current science-center exhibition, is the first exhibit at the center to focus on mathematics. For Beyond NumbersSteinberg created presentations for Cleveland mathematics teachers, and materials that suggest ways to show the exhibit to their classes. Oberlin students participated in the effort earlier this month when six of them viewed the exhibit and helped introduce it to a group of teachers.
As a member of the Cleveland Collaborative for Mathematics Education for four years--and now its chair--Steinberg has been involved with many activities that support mathematics teachers in Cleveland. Last year, for example, the collaborative sponsored Cleveland's first-ever Mathematics Day. The event included a mathematics competition for sixth graders. Steinberg's Oberlin College class (Mathematics 221, Introduction to Mathematics Education) prepared many of the problems for the competition. On the day, 20 teams of Cleveland sixth graders met at Case Western Reserve University. Several Oberlin students helped out, including Andreas Orphanides '99 and Jordan Mueller, now a junior from Pittsburgh. Steinberg is already planning activities for next year's Mathematics Education course.
The collaborative is an arm of the Cleveland Education Fund, which makes grants to teachers for special projects. The fund is part of the Public Education Network, a national alliance of city public-school systems that shares information about educational issues.
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At another Great Lakes Science Center exhibit Steinberg and Watts try to find the shortest path around the world that includes all of the highlighted cities. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERTA SHEARS |
Please send comments, questions, and suggestions about Oberlin Online news and feature articles to Linda.Grashoff@oberlin.edu.
