Tesselmania! PC CD students love for mathematics & art Start Price USD 12.49 Current Price USD 12.49 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Sunday, November 16, 2008 End Time Sunday, November 23, 2008 Location Indianapolis, IN See more about 'Tesselmania! PC CD students love for mathematics & art' Description Tesselmania is a piece of software that defies traditional classifications.  Described in recent catalogs as a creativity tool, Tesselmania takes the mathematical idea of tessellation-repeated intricate interlocking shapes-and applies it to artistic design endeavors in the spirit of the artist M.C. Escher.  But here is the bottom line on this software.  It is a cool tool for children to use to create engaging patterns, as easy to use as a paint program. My copy of the Tesselmania CD started easily-put the CD in the tray, open the CD, and launch Start Tesselmania .  Next the user sees a screen with tessellations that presents a choice: enter Tesselmania, or enter a preview of Tesselmania Deluxe, an updated version of the program that The Learning Company would like the user to purchase for $24.95.  Once a student has been shown to just go into Tesselmania, however, this marketing ruse should prove no problem.  One other unique feature of this program is that it has a number of examples of tessellations for students to look at to help inspire the students' own designs and give them a glimpse at what is possible.  Students can return to look at these examples at several points in the program, a useful feature since many of them are quite intricate. In the main part of the program, students reshape a tile into whatever design they choose that will still tessellate.  To accomplish this they use the "push pin" tool, which acts as if the lines on the tile were string, and the student is putting a bunch of pins in place to create a new string design.  The perimeter of the tile can be reshaped in many ways.  There are, however, certain shapes which will not tessellate.  If the student inadvertently tries to make one of these shapes, the program adjusts the tile back to one that will tessellate. Then the program provides a typical set of paint tools for the student to use to decorate their tessellating tile.  These tools include things such as a fill tool which fills the tile space with color or pattern, a stamp tool which allows the student to stamp particular shapes (including eyes and mouths), and various circle and rectangle drawing tools which allow the student to draw different features.  Once the tile has been shaped and decorated, a click of the mouse tessellates the single tile into an intricate pattern.  Menu options allow the designer to choose contrasting colors or the same colors in creating the design. Other buttons allow the student to see how they created their tile, and then how it was tessellated to create their design.  This latter sequence plays back as an animation the student can put into a slide show and watch at varying speeds.  These features allow the student not only to create intricate and interesting designs, but to see just how they were created through various kinds of tiling, or tessellating.  After a design has been created, the original tile can be easily altered both in shape and in decoration, enabling students to easily play around and modify their designs and explore different variations. Files may be saved through the standard Mac File/Save method.  With the quality of designs this tool makes possible, teachers and parents should teach their students early how to save and open a file in this program, because they will not want to loose their creations each time.  The program also permits students to print their own designs in several different formats. Students will need some guidance in making their first designs, and exploring the different kinds of tiles that will tessellate and the various ways the tiles can be moved to create intricate patterns.  But after a clear demonstration, students should easily be able to use the program independently.  This is the kind of creativity tool that a student can fall in love with; it restores a certain organic link between mathematics and art, a link that is too often severed in our teaching of mathematics in schools. I showed this program to my 10 year-old daughter about a month ago.  She is a girl who is comfortable using computers to paint, word process, track down Carmen Sandiego's band of thieves, and journey on the Oregon Trail.  She has spent several hours on her own, with her younger sister and with friends, creating patterns using Tesselmania.  To date she has saved at least 15 such patterns, with names like "gigglebox," "seals sunning," and "Trinity."  She loves to make things in any media, be it clay, sewing, toothpicks, and the like.  Being my own daughter she is of course one of the two smartest girls in the history of the planet.  But I really enjoy the sense of ownership she shows in making her own original designs and using the graphics tools to decorate them in ways that she finds appealing.  This is what I find fascinating as an educator, and frankly it is something that is missing from many "educational" or "edutainment" programs these days.  I heartily recommend Tesselmania as a program that students can use to create their own original and intriguing designs.  For WindowsITEM IS: USED - CD IN SLEEVE Place a Bid!