Comments on: What Can You Do With This: Glassware

By: Jason Dyer

Jason Dyer — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 02:56:09 +0000

Josh, if I was running the lesson probably first I would hand out plastic cups that students could experiment where yes, they could just see how they roll, but they have the assignment of *why* they roll the way they roll … then they get the purely digital cups, and have to figure out based on their experiments what the answers should be.

Essentially I’d do it as a science experiment, where one gathers data, forms hypotheses, then tests those hypotheses to a new situation. If the hypotheses fail, then I’d have the students go back to the original glasses to try again and then go back at them with Digital Glass #2, etc.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:42:35 +0000

Jason's standard-issue argument applies here more than ever but the media isn't as useless as Dina suggests. Two reasons why:

Online learning.
A digital cupboard is useful for storing dozens of cups of different shapes and sizes.

Real cups are essential components of this investigation but they won't be the only component and the other components won't be exclusively non-digital. I could probably illustrate that better if someone would kick off the lesson plan, though. The framing of these objects into something that every learner can access is tricky.

By: josh g.

josh g. — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 05:49:37 +0000

(Whether that’s an argument for using the video clip or for tweaking the lesson, I don’t know.)

By: josh g.

josh g. — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 05:47:45 +0000

If the kids had the glasses in hand from the start, what would be the motivation to use geometry to work out how the glass will roll? They could just, you know, roll it.

By: Dina

Dina — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:18:51 +0000

heyyy..the blog wiped out my smiley face on that last comment!

By: Dina

Dina — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:17:50 +0000

no nuking intended. My judgement of the silliness of this particular video (re: would you just give them the glasses already?!) is merely heightened by the fact that Dan has used video in the past to so very, very much greater added-value effect.

By: David Cox

David Cox — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:25:03 +0000

Dan
Which “degenerate” case did you use?

By: David Cox

David Cox — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:15:56 +0000

Yeah, I don’t think that the applet is sophisticated enough to deal with degenerate cases. If the radii are equal, it fails because the glass would roll straight (which I was happy about). Other than that, I think it works. You planning on giving the kids degenerate glassware to roll around?

By: Jason Dyer

Jason Dyer — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:06:51 +0000

Man, I was trying to play nice, and Dina just whips out the nukes. I’m going to hide behind a bunker now.

By: Dina

Dina — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:01:30 +0000

Heck, Jason, why wait until the *end* of the lesson? I mean, I understand the extrapolated usefulness of this kind of media in some situations: after all, one must think beyond one’s boundaries, and there are too many underprivileged societies out there whose citizens have never seen or owned a glass. The UN really needs to step up on that. But the US of A is not one of them. And never will be, thank god.