Rhett Allain picks apart the dubious physics of Up, Pixar’s latest kiddie joint:
If you can model the hairs on the head of a man in an animation, donโt you think you could use Newtonian mechanics to plot the position of the GPS? I donโt know, maybe it would have fallen too fast or something. Oh well.
He has graphs and everything.
[Apologies for the repost. The original (reportedly) defected to Canada leaving me to reconstruct it from pieces. I would have let the post expire gracefully but the comments were โ and I’m not kidding about this โ eye-blisteringly incredible. Check them out.]
I teach Algebra 1 and Remedial Algebra 1, a schedule which offers me interesting contrasts and case studies daily. The remedial population, as you might expect, features more behavior problems, lower rates of attendance, higher mobility, higher incidence of poverty, weaker student skills, more individualized education plans on file with the district, and those students are more likely to have disliked math (or their math teacher) in the past. After three years of trial and error, I have found intermittently successful ways to remediate most of these issues.
The feature of this group that confounds me and defies my remediation is this: they are far less likely find our daily show and tell interesting than are their contemporaries in non-remedial Algebra.
What I’m saying is that, when I play, for example, this fantastic loop of time lapse photography, my Algebra 1 students sit a few millimeters closer to the edges of their seats and lean a few degrees closer to the screen than do my Remedial Algebra students. They call out observations and deconstruct the movie in ways the remedial classes do not anticipate. In general, they seem eager to engage the unknown whereas my Remedial Algebra students seem to prefer that the unknown stay unknown, that life’s unturned rocks stay unturned.
Pixel’s Revenge timelapse showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo.
This bears out even between sections of the same course. The length of a class’ discussion of show and tell media correlates positively to the class’ average grade.
No pithy conclusion. I have no idea what I can do with this.
a/k/a Redesigned: Dan Meyer
Then
Now
Something I have been completely wrong about is the best way to use slide software in a math class. A few years ago I wrote a design series explaining how I use color theory, grid systems, etc., to clarify complex procedures, but the whole thing turns out to be simultaneously a) a lot more fun and b) a lot less time-consuming than that.
My reversal in slide design reflects a shift in my math pedagogy also. Far more important to me now than “developing fluency with complex procedures” is “developing a strong framework for interpreting unfamiliar mathematics and the world.”
I’m not trying to set up a false dichotomy here. We do both. Both are important. But all too often slides like that first one, with the classroom dialogue and solution method predetermined, cordon off classroom dialogue and student reflection onto very narrow paths. That kind of pedagogy does nothing to unify mathematics, tending, instead, to position complex procedures in isolation from each other, which is a very confusing way to learn math and a very laborious way to teach it.
Instead, I want my students to focus without distraction on a) how new questions are similar to old questions, b) how tougher questions demand tougher procedural skills, asking themselves c) which of their older tools can they adapt to these tougher questions?
For example, I put six equations on separate slides, equations we have seen. I asked, “how many answers are there?” One. Two. Zero. Etc.
Then I put up an inequality, tweaking the problem slightly, and quickly.
They told me there were lots of answers. I asked my students to start listing them. “7, 6, 5, 4.2, 4.1, 4,” etc.This became tiresome quickly and made the introduction of a graph โ a picture of all those answers โ clear and necessary.
Slide software makes it easy to sequence these mathematical objects, ordering and re-ordering them to promote contrasts and complements. Slide software lets me sequence these mathematical objects quickly, from anywhere on the globe, from photos and videos I take, from movies my students watch, from textbooks too. Graphic design is useful to mathematics, but I am happy to have discovered certain constraints on that usefulness and, simultaneously, higher fruit hanging elsewhere.
It is the curation of this mathematical media that interests me now, though I reserve the right to return to this space shortly and reverse myself again.
These days the technologists who remain vital are not experts and not generalists but rather techo-existentialists. The mantra is learn what you need for NOW and let it go – chances are it will change by the time you need or use it again.
Someone help me out here. How has clear, cinematic communication changed since The Jazz Singer first deployed synchronized music and dialogue in 1927? If, in fact, those conventions haven’t changed appreciably in nearly a century, shouldn’t the edublogosphere match its seemingly boundless enthusiasm for new media creation tools and new mechanisms for distributing those media with some reflection on the ancient, unchanged fundamentals of those media?
Case in point:
Alec Couros posted a video of an elementary school’s touching, deeply heartfelt rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” The ensuing commentary circled issues of copyright, walled gardens, global distribution, digital footprints, etc., but Darren Kuropatwa, out of all those technofuturists, hit the bullseye, noting the truly transcendental:
Darren: My favourite bit came at the very end when the teacher turned and spoke to the camera: โThat was gooood!โ That comment encompassed so much; about him, his students, and how they all feel for each other.
A milligram of sober deconstruction (“why do I like this?”) is worth, for my money, a kilogram of exuberant, big-picture futurism (“how does this change everything?!”). It would do this old curmudgeon’s heart some good to see some balanced restored to our discussions of ancient arts.
Killer concept and execution on this Cold War Kids video. You can activate/deactivate any instrument at any point in the song and change any musician to any one of four tracks.
I have no objection to loading this thing up after the opener exercises and simply playing with it. If the moment offered itself, though, I wouldn’t mind asking:
The difference between those two numbers is staggering, worth classroom discussion, a sign of the times, etc.
[BTW: Thanks to Karl Fisch for spotchecking my hyperlink.]