For math we at first found it a little difficult to portray really strong emotions into what we are teaching. Not many students feel that passionately about anything related to Algebra! So we decided to target something that everyone knows and is familiar with: beauty. This was our hook to draw the students in because everyone is familiar with beautiful faces in Hollywood. Relating this to math may at first seem like an obtuse sort of idea, but extracting a connection between the two will hopefully ingrain it into their minds. The music needed to be lively and set a pace where it keeps the students interest throughout. And lastly, we posed a question at the end, where they see the Golden Ratio in their lives, which we would open up for discussion in the classroom and get the critical thinking juices flowing.
Digital Stories do seem like a lot of work for such a short amount of classroom time that the students will see it. I feel that they will be very effective in other content areas where discussion can follow and deep questions can be addressed. But for math, it sort of seemed like a lot of work for something that will most likely have to be explained further in classroom lecture so they can grasp all the details. However, if there was an extremely important subject that the students needed to learn, say, the distance formula or Pythagorean's Theorem or the trigonometric functions, Digital Stories might be very useful to produce an effective way for them to remember. They reach such a variety of learning styles and could play with emotions in a ways that permanently places things into long-term memory.
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A lot of the information presented in this video was extremely similar to others that we have seen in the past. It did bring some interesting points though. The computer that will have capabilities like a human brain just blows my mind and the fact that a $1,000 computer will handle the capabilities of the entire human species is almost incomprehensible. Crazy!!! This just means that we as teacher have to continue to better ourselves so that we can be prepared to teach these incredibly capable kids. We are going to have to bring our A-game to the table and be willing to alter our teaching to fit their needs as technology changes from year to year.
