My first foray into using the video camera to engage pupils in mathematics.

image from http://www.flipcamera.co.uk/

My department recently purchased a Flip video camera from Amazon at my request.  My head is full of ideas about self evaluation, presentations, pupil interviews, screencasting, etc – the trouble as always for me is where to start.

So here’s what I’m going to do first.
The main aim is to engage pupils in their learning by making them believe that maths is all around us and truly important to our everyday lives.  My target audience is S1-S3.

The plan is to video various scenes in and around Thurso and set the pupils discussion tasks to answer the title question.

I’m going to start with the obvious;

• Retail displays including offers, discounts and deals.
• In the supermarket I’m heading for the fruit and veg aisle for weights, budgets, conversions, ratio.
• Off to the estate agent window for rent and mortgage info which I will follow up with household bills.
• The bank will provide some negative numbers, personal finance and some complicated percentage calculations in the form of compound interest and APR.
• Off down the river for an introduction to vectors which I learned about teaching the cadets last month.
• A wander in the park to look at Fibonacci, the golden ratio and maths in nature courtesy of Marcus du Sautoy and Teacher’s TV.
• Finish with a closer look at some of the buildings and architecture in Caithness – this may well be worth a trip to Dounreay to get the dome close up.

The more I think about this, the more excited I get – again, it’s an idea that has been bubbling around for a while.
If all goes well, I’d like to then send the pupils on a mission to record their own videos – around the school to begin with and then further afield.

What have I missed?  Your ideas to enrich this project would be more than welcome.

Many thanks to Tom Barrett and his amazing Interesting Things series.

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