The Rookery

Last night when I was at my chorus rehearsal a man looked over my shoulder, "Mazes?" he asked.  He seemed surprised, perhaps because the maze I was working on was a lot simpler than something that would normally captivate an adult.

"Yeah, it's for my 4th and 5th graders — we're doing maze solving algorithms tomorrow and I'm trying to get my head around it before I have to teach it to them."

It turns out that he was a computer science major and had just found a 20 page paper he had written on maze solving algorithms.  His parting words were, "I wish I'd gotten to do that in 4th grade!  I had to wait for college"

Well, the Herons weren't waiting.  They gasped as I used the dead end filler algorithm to find the path through one maze and they giggled as the wall follower algorithm took me down one obviously dead end after another.  Then they tried it for themselves — often commenting on the strengths of the different algorithms and the frustrations they sometimes brought on.  Many asked if we could try out the algorithms in the real world and we discussed which ones you could use without being able to see the whole maze.

I taught another maze creation algorithm called Primm's algorithm and Sam W. taught "Sam's Web Algorithm" which creates a very cool looking maze when you use hexagon graph paper.  Students are beginning to create a book of mazes to sell at Monkey See, Monkey Read.  Others are creating their own algorithms and we're looking into constructing a maze on the checkerboard plaza and a labyrinth on the school grounds (anyone have access to rocks or other material we could use?)

When I first did research for this theme in the summer, I did a cursory look at the maze algorithms and decided they would be too hard to teach.  But, guided by the student's interest, I took a second look.  I've shared with the students the learning I've had to do in order to teach them.  Most of the algorithm explanations are written from a computer science perspective and, since I'm not a computer scientist, they took a lot of figuring out.  Then, once I was able to understand what was going on, I had to figure out a way to present the algorithm to the Herons.  I think it's good for them to see me learning along side with them (sharing their excitement when something clicks and their frustration when the disequilibreum gets to be too much).

So…for Friday perhaps we'll tackle the concentric circles of the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth.  Wish us luck!