Digital Video in Mathematics

So I covered the Language Arts chapter of Teaching with Digital Video, but continued on with the Math chapter mainly out of curiosity. I've always considered math the content area of most challenge with things like technology integration or cross-curricular connections, so I found the idea of digital video most intriguing.

This chapter came from the same 3-fold stance of video: watching, analyzing, and creating; and contained several lesson plans utilizing each of those techniques. I must admit, however, I think most of the lesson plans may be stretching things a bit. I bought into more easily the "watching" lessons, because video can always be used as a way to demonstrate or visualize a concept; but that can only go so far before the videos become superfluous. With the analyzing and creating videos in math, the "Marching Band Choreography" lesson plan won me over (I'm sure it helps that I was a band kid myself, but not exclusively.), and I think it totally falls into today's discussion of teaching, learning and the curriculum. A teacher using this lesson presents a problem in video form, which the students identify, analyze and eventually apply to their own creations recorded on video. In all my years of marching band, I never thought about how geometrically-based it really is, so I can certainly see the technology working with the curriculum all the way through the problem-based learning to be something the students could really enjoy and benefit from.