Hi everybody!
My name is Jason Ermer and I am experimenting with this new blog called
Collaborative Mathematics.
So, thanks for checking it out!
Since we’re brand-new I thought I’d put a little video up here explaining my
idea about how this whole thing is going to work.
I’m hoping to use video, like this, as a means of bringing together a community
of mathematical problem solvers.
Potentially a world wide community of mathematical problem solvers.
I think that would be pretty cool.
Here’s the idea. It’s got four phases.
Phase 1: I post a challenge video to YouTube and in that video I offer some
sort of a mathematical challenge or some sort of problem to explore.
And it will be posted to our channel on YouTube and linked through the
Collaborative Mathematics website.
Phase 2: you watch the video and then you
explore the mathematical challenge that I present.
Ideally, you would do this with some friends.
I’m a big believer in collaboration and group work and listening to other people
think about a problem so you could use these challenges as an excuse to get a
problem-solving team together and do some interesting mathematics.
Then, after you have some ideas about the challenge --
maybe you’ve solved it, maybe you haven’t, it’s actually OK
either way -- but once you have some ideas about it, then...
Phase 3: you and your problem-solving team make a response video and you
post a video response to the challenge video in YouTube.
So, in your video you’ll explain wherever you are with the problem.
Did you solve it? Great! Tell us what you did, and how
you got there, and why your answer is the right answer.
Did you get stuck along the way? Also great!
We learn a lot from mistakes that we make
and places we get hung up, so if you didn’t solve the problem, or you’re not
totally confident about your answer, that’s OK.
You can tell is where you are. Where you get stuck?
Or, at what point in the process did you lose your confidence?
Anything like that. It’s all good!
Because we can learn from each other no matter what.
Because that happens in phase 4.
We have the opportunity to learn from each other because we can all watch the
response videos that other people have submitted and maybe learn something
new about the problem. about the problem.
Did everybody solve it in the same way?
Did somebody solve it in a really creative way that we hadn’t thought of?
That would be a cool thing to see.
Did everybody get the same answer?
Does everybody have the same explanation
for why that answer is the right answer? Maybe there’s variation in that.
Maybe somebody says something in a response video that helps you get
unstuck. That would be cool.
Maybe something you say helps somebody else get unstuck.
You wouldn’t maybe know that, but maybe
they’ll leave you a comment and they’ll tell you all about how your video helped
them get unstuck.
In any case, I think that there’s an opportunity for a really interesting
conversation that we can all use to learn about mathematics and about ourselves
as problem solvers. problem solvers.
I think it’s pretty cool.
Check out the blog. We’re at CollaborativeMathematics.org
You can find us on Facebook and Google Plus.
Follow us on Twitter.
You can subscribe to YouTube channel.
And if you are interested in taking up the challenge the current
video is posted...
I’m pointing. Where am I pointing?
It’s posted over at collaborative mathematics.org
Just over there! Or, yonder!
I don’t know what I’m doing.
Anyway, go to the website and check it out, and I look forward to seeing what
happens next!