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I'm Dan and this is my blog. I'm a former high school math teacher and current head of teaching at Desmos. He / him. More here.

11 Comments

  1. Hm. Kids were pretty universally impressed (at least the ones who expressed an opinion.) Lots knew “the treadmill video” so they were primed to like it.

    I got the “too much time on their hands” comment from another teacher! I know, right?!

  2. Best part about this? My science students just finished simple machines and I introduced our “Rube Goldberg” project on Monday.

  3. Hmmm… This “Laronn” kid sounds pretty smart. At least he is getting the bigger picture. Kids these days are so diverse in their maturity that its hard to find the ones that can really appreciate the extraordinary amount of time put into this.

    We can only hope for future generations that they can really appreciate the effort that was put into this.

  4. Best part about this?

    I know a bunch of the crew that actually built the thing.

    Now to rope them into a real world math lesson.

  5. My son watches Attack of the Show, a G4 TV show. (He’ll be impressed that I admitted watching it on a blog comment.) They interviewed two of the band members on Tuesday and it’s worth watching to talk with your students about how much time and effort went into it. Wow.

  6. Hey, there is nothing wrong with having too much time on your hands.

    But actually, that video project was probably intensely time-consuming.

  7. Some years ago I played a computer game called ‘The Incredible Machine’. The concept was very similar to this, thouhg on 2D and in a scale that fit a 14 in screen at 640×480 resolution.

    BTW, I just stumbled upon your blog and found it amazing. You sure write alot, and I have four years of posts to catch up on, but what I’ve read so far is amazing. I’m studying math sciences with the intent of teaching… I was afraid of teaching high school math and though I’d work my way to a college class, ASAP, but reading what you write gives me hope.

  8. They definitely spent a lot of time and effort on that. And because of that four guys in an indie rock band probably know more about physics than I ever will.