I have this little project going over on Vimeo called the Video Story Problem Channel, and up until now most of the teachers involved have been creating a lot of really great student-created videos based around actual math from the real world (video from restaurants, home improvements stores, four wheeler races, etc.). Recently, I’ve been dabbling more with science-based videos, and wondering if there isn’t a way to encourage...

I’m not going to pretend that I remember enough about my high school physics to speak intelligently about the difference between  centrifugal and centripetal forces, but I do know a good piece of teachable media when I see it. When you introduce a brick to a front-loading washing machine spinning at several hundred RPMs, you get something both destructive and magical. If your mind works in similar ways to my own, you most likely...

Late last summer I went on a video-binge, capturing so many video story problem concepts that my iPhone and Flip cam regularly ran out of battery power before mid-afternoon snack time. While recharging and importing all of the videos to my laptop, I dumped all of the videos in folder, which I mostly forgot about until recently. Most of the videos weren’t terribly interesting after looking at them a second time, but a few stood out,...

In my never ending quest to find an engaging way to bring the real world into the classroom, I captured some video of my children and I playing with one of those massive rolling granite sphere water fountains. I’ve never really been intriqued by the tiny little desktop versions of these fountains, where a small amount of water is able to “float” a tiny granite sphere the size of a baseball, and then allow it to rotate...

Storytelling, inquiry, and mathematics go hand in hand, or so says Dan Meyer. And since he’s a former Google Curriculum Fellow, and a doctoral student at Standford, I’m going to put my faith in those fancy titles that he’s a pretty knowledgeable guy. That, and the small conversations we’ve had via Twitter give me a sense that he really understands one of the most important soft skills intrinsic to great teaching; the...

Apparently when you discontinue your cable TV for a couple of years, you miss out on all sorts of excellent programming, including an anime-imspired remake of 80s girlie show “My Little Pony”. Besides the butterflies, glitter, and heavy use of the word rainbow as an adjective, the show is rather cute, and inspired at least one physics presentation that’s getting pretty heavy viewing on YouTube. While the presentation...