My question is, why should the TEACHER tell them the volume of that container? To me, the obvious question is “I’ve seen those buckets all over the place, so why don’t I know how much water one of them holds?” Not to mention “how big is that drop of water?”. The key to problem solving is to ask yourself the many little questions that the authors put in those mealy mushy textbook bits.

@7:

Maybe, maybe not. The nice thing about Nancy’s video is that there is an obvious question that is as pointless as many textbook problems. I’m wondering how much my water bill goes up if I have a drippy faucet, and how much my electric bill goes up if that happens to be the hot water faucet, and how long it would take for the sink to overflow. Then I need to go figure out a whole bunch of things, including whether I can use that video to solve the problem in Dan’s video!

The panning camera emphasizes motion and speed, but de-emphasizes distance. Also, the angle of the camera (shot from slightly above) de-emphasizes vertical movement. A stationary camera with a side view low to the ground would emphasize the parabolic arc the runner makes.

A follow-up video with the multiple freeze-frame trick would be nice, but having that in the Act 1 video might make it too obvious that that’s what the teacher wants you to see.

Max: I’m curious how much you primed the teachers in Grand Forks… did you show a bunch of #anyqs before giving them their homework? How many? What did y’all talk about?

We checked out four photos and four videos beforehand. I asked them to come up with a question and a rating for how bad they wanted to know that question. They over the next day they made their own.

I’ve done this now in three one-day workshops using the #anyqs materials developed on Twitter and Grand Forks. It isn’t quite the same thing having people interrogate other people’s entries. There’s much more of a charge when the community interrogates its own.

As for the Dan v. Nancy thing, there are obviously a lot of different variables working for and against us here, but I’m going to come down in favor of Dan for the single reason (alluded to by J. Edwards) that Nancy already has her students in act two when they should still be enjoying, speculating about, and arguing over act one. The students are keenly aware they’re in a math problem in Nancy’s. She’s presenting information (with the timer, with the measuring cup) that should be given only once students ask for it in the second act of the problem.

If anyone wants to discuss you can get me on Twitter as @numbat63

I am assuming that there is one question that you want the students to ask when the video is being made. I think it’s safe to say that Dan’s video is more inherently interesting, but I think that Nancy’s is much more likely to get the students to the same question every time.