Ron Eglash is one of those smart types at RPI who's doing insanely cool and innovative things to get kids into math and science. I was just reading about some of his work involving "Culturally-Situated Design Tools," which, as the name implies, attempt to bridge the gap between abstract stuff like numbers and stuff that matters to kids, like corn rows, Native American beads, and snowflakes. Culture + Math = Ethnomathematics. Just check out the Corn Row Curves program and see for yourself. I think it's a really neat project, and I see applications for this kind of thing in my classroom. What do you think? Could you see me in corn rows?