This meter is different with how you actually get a deal depending on how you pay. I would have students tell me the best deals. Maybe say you want to park for different amounts of time (15 minutes, 20, 30, 1 hour, etc.) and explain the best payment method.

I tried taking this picture over the summer (in a moment that was very Dan-inspired). Only my photos didn’t turn out well and I didn’t have a compelling hook for students who rarely see parking meters, unless I turned it into a city vs country thing. In which case, Dina’s story and selling the point of becoming a savvy consumer just might work. Combined with other situations that would encourage shorter time choices. (Two minutes for a date, not so much.) Shopping? Library visit? I’m not sure where meters are located, especially in relation to what your students do.

I like the dating-themed unit, though I’m not convinced I could pull it off. (Confession, I was searching the archives a few weeks ago for the bubble graphs of where single people live. Include it too.)

1) how far can you walk away from the meter (given current city layout, street light timing, car and pedestrian traffic, your pace) before you have to turn around and put more money into the meter [assume the meter officer will promptly give you a ticket when the time exactly runs out]? Supposed the above variables were simplified? How does that change things?

How long can you linger in a store and how far away can you be from the meter to linger in a store a set amount of time?

Which meter do you want to park at given three or four stores that you absolutely want to shop at but minimize your return to the meter?

2) Reconstruct the background that is reflected in glass.

I’m teaching slope in my 8th grade math class right now.

This would be a great example of a system of equations…or assuming that all of the rates represent one function…the idea of linear vs. non-linear functions.

Domain and Range could come into play here as well

Two things, in ascending importance:

1. The joy of your blog is that I can talk about my local without fear of alienating those I’m meant to coach. wait, I’ve said too much. Sorry for not sharing your blog. I’m a greedy dog.

2. Okay, but what can you do with this:

You have students entering your class three years behind grade level. They are in a ‘ramp up’ course, meant to prepare for next year’s entrees: Algebra 100 or Geometry. They are asked to solve for x, because they need to do this. It’s all part of the ramp up process.

But ask them to talk about this, a sign at a clothing retailer:

‘2 for 25’ or ‘3 for 30’,

and they are crippled.

You see, this at-heart English teacher, having spent years increasing vocabulary with words like ‘misanthrope’ and ‘invective’ (we can talk word choice at a later date), never realized that for a meaty portion of the student body, the word ‘for’ signed complex, unsolvable mathematical procedure.

So I’m all for images. I’m all for signs. But I’m shocked at the emphasis on solving for x when prepositions render students mathematically impotent.

My God, Dan. Are you becoming… a *constructivist*??!

Not a trick question. Just wondering why math spend time on ‘x’ when, forgive me, it can’t help them navigate their way through the retail world (and other variations of the world they stand to inhabit).

With my current obsession with units of measurement, I convert these to an appropriate unit, say cents/minute.

Nickel: 2 1/2 cents/minute
Dime: 2 cents/minute
Quarter: 2 1/12 cents/minute

This reminds me of the duct tape picture and the nickel stealing vs. dime stealing.

You could take it in another direction and compare the parking meter to a monthly rate in a covered garage by converting to the same units. There’s some interesting trade-offs there between not having to feed the meter, convenience of having a reserved space, inconvenience of winding through a narrow garage, etc. The units could also be converted to $/hour and compared to minimum wage.

I suppose since the coins are discrete, you can do some combinatorial problems as suggested above.

Allowing the teacher to remove herself from the scene presupposes that we ( the teachers) have the autonomy to truly employ the Socratic method in mathematics courses

The teacher doesn’t really remove themselves from the scene. You are critically important for setting up the story, and for setting the beats that move it forward.

But, if it’s a good story, the kids tell it themselves, and you get to hide in the shadows while they do it. If the teacher weren’t crucially important for that, textbooks wouldn’t suck.

Which reminds me: I’ve got about 40 lbs of nickels lying around here. I’m quite sure that there will be an opportune time to drop a big canvas bag of them on some poor kid’s desk at some point.

Find a street nearby and count up the number of parking spaces. Assume that everyone is only using dimes (least efficient method). How many hours of continuous parked cars will it take to pay for the bailout of Wall Street?

Or to come at the the same issue from a less inflammatory hook: “Who cares about small change?” Why does the government pay such close attention to such small sums of money? Illustrates federal vs state vs local and leads into a discussion about the theory of laws like this one and why they exist.

Another humanities link, different direction. Put up alongside this one an image of the RFID-controlled parking meters that are the norm in many Asian countries (google image search – octopus parking meter – to see what we use in hong kong). “Why the difference?”

Could also do this one with any number of countries. Probably much harder to use this effectively in class…but it’s cool.