A mathematician can be an artist, scientist, engineer, inventor or more simply, an independent thinker – and is frequently more than one of these at once.

Your mission is to choose a mathematician/scientist and prepare a two-minute talk that will be given before your peers during the week of April 5, 2006. The talk should include biographical information as well as the person’s contributions to the world of mathematics, or use of mathematics in their work. A PowerPoint visual must accompany the talk. Please use the tear off section to declare your first, second and third choices. No two students will present information about the same professional. Choices will be honored on a first come, first serve basis, or something close to it.

  1. Create a digital poster of the mathematician of choice. You will to be presented to the class the week of April 5, 2006.
  2. A paper (minimum of two pages) that accompanies the talk should be handed in the day of the presentation. It must be doubled spaced, typed in 12- point font, contain a bibliography (created using Noodle Tools), with at least four sources, and internal citations (author, page).
  3. Save both the presentation and the paper to the Curricular Projects area of the server in a folder called "diversity"
  4. Your person should be chosen from the sources provided by Mr. Thomas.
  5. The answers to the following questions must be included in your paper and talk:
  6. If you were able to meet your person, what two questions would you ask?
    • What three words would you use to describe your person? Why?
    • Describe a typical day in the life of your person.
    • What do you think your person would say was his/her greatest contribution to humanity?
    • What obstacles did you face along the way to your success? In education? Socially? Emotionally? Business?
    • Do you think your person would have any regrets about their personal or professional lives? If so, what would they be?

    Students will create a personal folder in the "diversity" folder of the on the server Currciular Projects area to which they will save all their written work,the digital poster, as well as any illustrations they plan to use along with all corresponding website addresses.

  7. You will spend four class periods working in the MSCALC. You will create your poster using Macromedia Fireworks and you will publish your poster using Macromedia Dreamweaver
  8. After a brief introduction to Fireworks, following the step by step instructions, you will create your poster using the "Text" tool and the "drawing" tools available in Fireworks.
  9. You are to enhance your text using the stroke, fill end effects palettes. You can incorporate illustrations from http://www. artoday.com
  10. Once the poster is completed you will open Dreamweaver, and following the step by step instructions furnished, you will place the graphic on the page, and make a link back to the student index page.
  11. You may also enhance your page with color in the background, etc.
  12. Students will give an oral presentation of their mathematician to the class using the digital [poster as a visual aid. They must clearly explain why their château is unique and give examples of things to do and see there. They may use their illustrations to help them give an overall view of their château but they must not read from the poster. The student who speaks more naturally and fluently will earn a higher grade for the project.



Timely declaration of topic (10)
Prepared for presentation on appropriate date (10)
Presentation was within time limit (5)
Adequate biographical information included in presentation (20)
Visual accompanied verbal presentation Power Point (25)Presentation included person’s contributions to world of mathematics (10) _
Firm grasp of concepts presented (10)
Bibliography (5)
Internal Citations (5)
Total Points _____

This project will help you become acquainted with the work of a diverse collection of mathematicians. You will also have the opportunity to hone your technical skills by preparing a digital poster presentation using Fireworks, writing a paper using Word and creating a bibliography using Noodle Tools.

This project was created and implemented by Sue Negro, Mathematics teacher for Germantown Academy for Middle School. Technical assistance furnished by Carol Siwinski, Curricular Technology Specialist and Rod Thomas, Librarian.

March, 2006