The Role of Television
So I don't have "regular" TV at my home; I see little point in paying a lot of money for hundreds of channels when I only watch a few. Neither do I get the regular free TV channels, even with a special antenna, due to Tyler, MN's unique location on Buffalo Ridge in the Southwest of the state. But I do have a Roku device, which allows me to access several channels free and watch programming at my convenience, often with few, if any commercial interference. The PBS Roku channel has many programs I enjoy. Being a documentary junkie, this summer's favorites have included Nova, Civilizations, Outback, and others. In this blog post, I will be discussing a recent Nova episode. NOVA: The Origami Revolution My mom loves origami. When my siblings and I were younger, she would attempt to get us interested in it by trying to teach us what were suppose to be simple shapes and folding techniques. She would purchase paper and how-to books, and when evening chores were finished, and I'm assuming now that she needed to relax from the stress of being a home-health provider to children with serious medical needs, my mom would sit in the kitchen folding paper while the rest of us played a game or watched our favorite TV programming. So when I noticed NOVA had a new program on origami, I was curious. What new techniques were they discovering or investigating? The episode and its resources can be viewed here at NOVA's official website. The show, broadly speaking, discusses ways in which origami is now being used in the STEAM areas: science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. It explores the medical industry, NASA's applications, and others. Curriculum Ideas Earlier this week, Russell-Tyler-Ruthton teachers attended workshops lead by SWWC service coop trainers and meant to inspire more interactive technology usage. One trainer mentioned that in a math class, he had recommended the teacher send students around the building with i-pads to take photos of angles, then come back to class in order to identify and discuss the types of angles and the uses of them. Perfect tie-in for origami! So this is my idea. A math/geometry teacher could have his or her class watch the episode in full or in segments as students learned about the various shapes and their angles. There would probably need to be a vocabulary list made up as well which includes not only the math terms, but some of the more complex terms used in the episode, such as array, theorem, hypothetical, proof, etc. Integrating the idea from our trainer, students would use their devices, such as cell phones, i-pads, or others, to identify the shapes and ideas around them, then shift it into the world of origami. If students were given basic origami shapes to practice creating, which also documenting the angles they were using along the way, there is a curriculum tie-in option which would lead to journal entries, which could take the form of a standard written journal, a science-log type journal, a blog, or something else which documents their progress of student understanding of and frustrations/successes of applying their knowledge and understanding of geometry to origami. To take it a step further, the geometry teacher could partner with the art teacher (that connection should be obvious), the English teacher, or the Chemistry teacher depending on the level of student. As an English teacher, I'll discuss my idea for that particular inter-disciplinary study. Have you ever read Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Abbott? A free copy is available from Project Gutenberg. I read it freshmen year at Gustavus Adolphus College in one of my math classes. Anyway, the novel describes a world in which the perspective is only in two-dimension, but the characters exist in different shapes. So, if one of the characters is a triangle, all you see coming toward you is a straight line, and so on and so forth. You can't distinguish one shape/individual from another until you are close to them because they kinda look like lines of different shapes. They don't stand up. Get it? So, you could have an English teacher go through this text with students as one idea if you wanted to emphasize literature. Other ELA tie-ins may include a writing/communications unit where students work on their project journals. Or you could find another, age/ability appropriate text to read. A research tie-in may include a discussion on the differences between different kinds a texts. For instance, throughout the episode, NOVA interviews mathematicians, medical researchers, and engineering departments which are working toward publishing findings in different areas--think Tamiflu, the drug you take when your students make you sick, or the stent your parents or grandparents might have for their heart. It wouldn't be incredibly difficult to find a newspaper, magazine, or website article on any of the topics presented in the episode. Also find an actually research finding, or scholarly source, and discuss the differences with the students. This is a lesson required by Common Core State Standards, so why not tie it into something interesting, then get students to try both forms of reading to identify the differences? UC Davis has a pretty good chart you could use to discuss it. So does Southwest Minnesota University. That class discussion could lead into an opportunity for students to attempt the different formats and language usage as they present their learning from geometry class in different ways. Comments are closed.
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Why?Sometimes I run into inspiring television shows, documentaries, books, billboards, recipes, etc which make me think wouldn't that make a neat lesson adaptation? ArchivesCategories
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