A couple of week ago I posted a video I created about my average daily commute….only sped up to about 1200 mph. The result was quite interesting, and an excellent study of how to create a certain “mood” or convey a particular type of experience to the viewer. I was able to turn my daily 40 mile commute into a video game (at least I felt as though I did), with the right music and some serious acceleration of the...

I recently had the opportunity to spend a day volunteering for my daughter’s field day at school. Among the various athletic activities outdoors, there was also down time for the Kindergartners to rest, have a bit of snack, and play inside away from the sun. I got to spend one such down time at the “domino table”, playing with a brightly colored set of plastic dominos. As many children playing with dominos eventually do,...

This is perhaps my most ambitious and difficult to assemble video story problem yet. Which has me seriously conflicted, as it also feels like one of the most traditional, and least inquiry-based story problems. It feels like nothing more than just a “fluffy” version of a typical text based story problem taken straight from a Calculus 1 textbook. However, given the nature of Khan Academy’s very rote problems that exist only...

In my ever constant, and increasingly obscure, quest to pose real life curiosities and problems that I come across throughout the week, I’ve created a video story problem centered around those tiny little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body lotions that hotels offer their guests. I was staying at a hotel near the Detroit airport last week while producing some pilot video content for a new Michigan Department of Education grant,...

I’ve been nurturing a new found love for short video projects, especially the idea of talking story problems and giving them a visual element. The story problem is probably one of the most classic examples of a very valid attempt at putting math into real world context (depending on the execution). I’ve always advocated to teachers that anything you can do to personalize your teaching, or make connections between the material...