Tag: OpenLab8

Videos – Gary Zeng

Part 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6W6P8JZW0o

From watching this video I’m amazed that you can make 90 and 180 degrees from make of any size or folded. When I’m in school I would always be using a ruler or a protractor in middle school and high school. I feel so amazed from learning how much a small of piece of paper can accomplished when folded. If I ever need to draw a 90 or 45 degree angle I would know a good way to create one know. I would really recommend that others should watch this video also on how informative it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXoh6vi6J5U

This video is interesting and also I enjoyed how the person was rhyming like if they were actually there during that time. The video was like a code book because the person was using the numbers from pi. This is making me think about the books that I read from high school from William Shakespeare. I think now that could there way of speaking be some kind of language from using the numbers from pi. The video was also informative for me learning about champernowne’s number and also copelano-erdos number.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C9PALaDh2U

I know that singing was a good way to help memorize things for class or was a good educational way to learn new things. I didn’t realize that you can memorize pi from singing it by changing your pitch while singing each of the numbers. The video helped me remember some of the numbers of pi that I forgot. This video is a good way of helping us remember the numbers of pi. Singing the number in a higher pitch for the bigger numbers while a lower pitch for the lower numbers in pi. This is a good method for helping others to remember the digits of pi other than 3.14.

Part 2:

From watching the three videos I really enjoy watching them and the information they talked about. I now know resourceful ways in creating 90, 60, 45, 22.5 degrees with folding a piece of paper 3 to 4 times in have depending on what angle you want to draw. Another video helps helps we with remembering the digits of pi with a way that everyone enjoys doing and listening in this kind of day and age. Singing can be a good way to help anyone to remember information for class or for teachers to help students learn a new topic that they are having trouble with. I didn’t realize that when the characters in William shakespeare books could be speaking in code from using the digits of pi. I knew that numbers can be used as codes for letters but I didn’t know that numbers from pi. The one question that I have is was the characters from William shakespeare plays actually speaking in pi when you decode the words that they are saying into numbers? Another question that I have is if you can sing about the digits in pi can you sing with some of the digits in pi but can you do it for all the digits in pi?

Part 3:

The videos could mean in my own teaching is that I can teach students to be resourceful for things that aren’t enough supply of in the classroom like protractors. I believe that the videos can be both math and teaching because when watching the videos you are learning a concept form math and also teaching you new information that you didn’t know until you watched the videos. I believe that the video about William Shakespeare and connecting to pi could be a prove and is still trying to prove it now currently. I can connect this to Lockhart’s Lament because students can learn from watching videos or find creative ways to help them to remember information for a new topic or information for a test.

Wau: The Most Amazing, Ancient, and Singular Number
         In this video Vi Hart talks about a number that was discovered in East Asia and in many other ancient societies. She describes the different mathematical relationships, usually infinite fractions, that included Wau (some that just included Wau and others were equal to Wau). She related the special number to nature and other fields of study like physics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsOXvQn3JuE
Why Every Proof that .999… = 1 is Wrong
          In this video Vi Hart goes through some of the many proofs that are used to show that .9 repeating is equal to one. She goes on to prove or attempt to prove these wrong to say that the two are different numbers that are independent of each other. She invalidates these proofs and then briefly talks about why mathematicians believe it is so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfJzrmS9UfY
Doodling in Math Class: Stars
           In this video Vi Hart talks about drawing stars and connects this activity to math. She talks about stars with different numbers of points and how the number of points relates to the number of sides in each of the polygons that make up the star. She then makes this star drawing into a “game”.
            I was a little confused, especially during Hart’s “Doodling in Math Class: Stars” video not because I did not understand what she was saying just because I felt that she was going a little to quick while speaking and the video recording was also sped up so while trying to process what she had just said she was already on to the next part of her speaking and all throughout her hand was moving very quickly on the paper. She did show what she was saying at the same time that she was saying it. For this reason I had to pause the video multiple times to reassess what she said.   There was not anything in the video that particularly bewildered me or made me say wow except for when Hart started drawing the much larger stars with many points (when she began using the protractor): I thought that the stars that she made were beautiful and they also require a lot of talent to make. I learned that a star with p points can be drawn with 2 p/2- gons; this was a mathematical relationship that I had not been aware of. In fact I have not ever looked into the math behind stars before. I also learned that even with a set number of points in the star and a set number of polygons formed within the star, there are still multiple ways of drawing the star even with the restrictions. Although I did have to pause the video ever so often so that I did not fall behind on what Hart was saying, I for the most part understand everything that she said. So the only question I have after watching the video, is not directly about the math or the drawing in the video, it is: how does Hart discover the relationships between things like the sides of the stars and the number of polygons in the star; or rather: how is she so successful at finding things like the “game” in this video, that still relate to math, but that a majority other people would not be able to discover?
         I think the video could really help me with my own math teaching, even though I did not really enjoy the fast pace of it.  What I can learn from Hart is that I need to implement creativity in the classroom at least every once in a while especially in order to keep the students engaged. As Hart emphasizes in the beginning of the video while talking about how she was bored during her math class while learning about factoring, classes that are only lecture can get boring and can cause students to become distracted. So rather than have my students lose focus like Hart did from what the class was actually about: I will give my students an activity to do in class that directly relates to the topic of the day. This way they have something fun to look forward to and are then more inclined to pay attention during class so that they can preform well during the activity. This way they get the fun that they want in class, without losing focus from the actual class and making fun for themselves. Hart’s video really helped me come up with this idea for my own classroom because she expresses that class can get boring, which is true for any student at one point or another and that there are fun and thought-provoking activities to do during class that can still be mathematical and related to class. Kids have a hard time focusing on school work especially for note-taking and problem solving but they are often all for interactive activities, and so I have come to realize after watching this video that combining the two ways of learning can help to take away some of this lack of focus.