We decided to enter the Wai Math's Competition, the area that we decided to concentrate on was the video section. Coming up with an idea that was going to be 'Mathematically Themed' and interesting turned out to be challenging. I had to stress to the students the need to think about 'wow'. The concept changed during the course of the 'networking' process. The original idea was to see how students/people around the world would solve the problem so we could focus on identifying the strategy. Pretty much everyone that we saw right from the start did the same thing, they used resources to work through it. I don't think that the answer, once materials were used was particularly challenging. So at this point it was more or less foundering, as the original point was getting lost in the fact that a) everyone was getting the right answer b) the method that was used involved using materials to represent the Canoe and the students and the adults. Grasping for ideas I spoke to the main student and asked him to estimate how far that the problem would travel there and back, he said 500km, at that point I had no idea myself what so ever but I thought the estimate was on the 'low' side. As it turned out it was because later that day Mr Mac from Australia (Ulearn 2009) delivered a video which meant that the question had already travelled 2,500km one way. I'm still a little wary at this point if we've created truly a 'Maths' question, although I hope that the Judges will see it as that (its due next Wednesday) rather than an ICT question. The other issue that I have to resolve is the way to green screen it. I've got a limited ability myself and also restricted to Moviemaker for production purposes. At this point I've decided that the best solution is to show each of the videos from the other classroom/countries on the data projector with Bradley talking about each one and physically standing in-front of the screen and talking. We'd then edit down considerably and take the highlights, put it all together and have something in the three minute range (maximum of five minutes for the competition).
This is our 27th July Update with the links to the various class pages with links:
It started with an idea about a Mathematical Problem and solving it for the Wai Maths Video Competition, the idea being that we're looking at different ways to problem solve an answer. We're also keeping track of how far the question 'travels' and comes back in two weeks that we have to create our video, totalling the distance. Bradley's estimation for the distance that is travelled is 500 kilometres.
We've had our first answer from Otrohonga in the King Country from Otewa School, their answer is here - a distance of 60 kilometres (120 round trip), we also had it answered from Bairds Mainfrieght Primary School in Otara, Auckland (200 kilometre round trip) and we've just had another answer from New Zealand from the BestLittleClassinNZ! - Broadlands School in Reporoa.
Just today we have a video message from Mr Mac's Classroom in Australia, that meant the question had travelled another 5,000km there and back! We've still got until Sunday and have more answers and more videos on the way.
Thank you SO much to everyone that's taken Bradley's question and viewed it and especially those who have taken the time to prepare an answer for us, we're really excited at this end and the journey hasn't finished yet!
Thank you also to our global audience who have been passing this question on to have more people check it out and spread the word about it. We're very excited to be entering the competition next week and look forward to having some additional problem solving taking place from around the world!
