Mindrap

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MindRap is a math and science after-school program that guides students through the process of creating culturally specific multimedia lessons for younger students. During a cooperative design process facilitated by professional mentors, educators, artists, poets, and musicians, high school students create hip-hop content for animated multimedia modules. These modules teach basic math and science lessons to younger children by combining culture with proven memory enhancing elements including music, rhyme, repetition, and graphics. Student’s imagination and enthusiasm for hip-hop culture drive the design process. Digital media hardware and software are the mechanisms used to make MindRap lessons come alive.

MindRap sessions have been run with numerous students in Chicago, Illinois with inner city high school students. Workshops have also been conducted at the University of Alberta in Vancouver, Canada to the Bronx Museum of Arts in New York City on subjects from the number zero to the ozone layer.

[edit] History

Actor and writer, Julian Nyles Thomas, created the first MindRap prototype on the 'algebraic postulates of equality'. This led to a second prototype created by Aaron Covington, AKA Ghost Writer, on 'graphing equations'.

MindRap was first recognized as a potentially effective educational project by the Institute of African American E-Culture in 2003. There, PhD scholars mentored the MindRap staff to help develop the project. In 2003 the MindRap team held a workshop with the Algebra Unlimited Pedagogical Lab at UCLA. Dr. Renee Smith-Maddox ran the workshop and introduced the MindRap staff to a network of educators who helped mold the project. In 2004 MindRap staff partnered with founder of Traveling Poet, poet Daniel José Custódio and the Kellogg School of Management for guidance in strategic planning and business development.

The first MindRap sessions on odd and even numbers, venn diagrams, and prime numbers were run with the Young People's Project, part of The Algebra Project with Omo Moses in 2004. Students have responded very positively to the MindRap experience. Students have said "Having to work on something like this that is so complex helps improve teamwork skills and work with people", "It was an exciting way to integrate math into one of my favorite activities, music", "it was exciting". Younger students, who the lessons are created for, also have very enthusiastic responses to the experience.

MindRap staff has collaborated with the African-American Distributed Multiple Learning Styles Systems, AADMLSS, with Dr. Juan Gilbert and Dr. Stafford Hood to create a series of modules which demonstrate linear algebraic equations.