Video Inspiration

One reason I am so excited/motivated to do the "flipped classroom" is because of...

...my 11-year-old daughter.

Back in early December I caught her watching this  hexaflexagon video. Not only did she WATCH it... but she RE-watched it.... over and over again. I could hear the voice of the young lady from the video (Vihart) coming from the computer... Over and over again... interrupted by occasional 1-or-2-minute pauses...

I got curious and went over to look over my daughter's shoulder... She had scraps of paper and was folding them... gluing them.... and, later, coloring and writing on them. My daughter would pause the video at certain points in the instruction to make sure that she had gotten her work just right. Soon she had a couple hexaflexagons of her own. She was enthralled.

In the following weeks the whole "hexaflexagon" phenomenon had taken her over. My daughter was sharing hexaflexagons with everyone. Over the next three months she has probably seen that video over 50 times! And yet this was not the most amazing part...

What was really amazing was that MY DAUGHTER WAS LEARNING MATH through these videos.

And she LOVED it!

The young lady who made the inspiring hexaflexagon video is Vihart, a self-proclaimed, "professional mathemusician." Since then my daughter has watched many other of Vihart's videos and she would learn about spirals in nature, Fibonacci series, prime numbers, pi, tau,and even vector fields!

I find that Vihart has a unique way of presenting her material. It is fast-paced and their are usually two message streams running simultaneously (visual and aural). On her video list she has this "How to make a video about making a video" video that I highly recommend.