Primary- and middle-school math student have been doing Designing Quilts activities -- both with paper and on the computer -- using materials developed independently at Educational Development Centers (Daniel Watt, EDC) and Georgia Tech (Kristin Kaster Lamberty). In these environments, students notice visual patterns and from them develop ideas of ratio, and concepts that lead to algebra and geometry while maniputing shapes that make up a section of a quilt that then gets repeated.

In MOVIE 1, Vanderbilt's Richard Lehrer, who collaborated with EDC on its NSF-funded Technology Enhanced Learning of Geometry (TELG) project, describes the kinds of mathematical conjectures and thinking that students did when engaging with this activity. You can see some of projects that Massachusetts students did when using ETC's software by visiting EDC's TEDG and clicking on Quilt Gallery.