They Say, I Say

For Lecture this week and last I had you read short pieces discussing (1) the teaching strategies in Vsauce and (2) the value of Khan Academy for teaching classroom math. For today’s assignment, I’d like you to use one of those articles as a point of reference in your own analysis.

Start by re-reading both articles, looking for an idea or opinion that you’d like to respond to. Maybe you agree or disagree—or maybe the quote strikes you as explaining something you hadn’t understood before. Several options (of many possible):

1. Use a quotation as a starting point: “Stevens says X, but … ”
2. Bring in a quotation to solve a problem / confirm an insight of your own: “This approach to video education is advocated by Michael Stevens of VSauce fame….”

Structurally, the choice here is between moving from the article’s ideas to yours, or from your ideas ideas to the article. If you opt for A, cover the article in ¶1, and use ¶2 to introduce your video evidence that complicates or confirms his account. Alternatively, if you follow option B, use ¶1 to present your video, ending the ¶ with an insight about how it works or a puzzle about why it works. Then use ¶2 to introduce the article as confirming the insight or solving the puzzle. Alternatively—a third option—move from your ideas to the article and back in a sequence of three ¶s.

To provide an evidentiary basis for your ideas, you will need to select a YouTube educational video. So think about all the videos you’ve watched over the past few weeks, and the ideas they’ve stirred in you, and then look at a few others that pop up in YouTube’s “up next” column. Make sure you cite key details from the video OR from your experience watching the video as evidence for your account of how/why this video teaches (or fails to teach) the viewer.

Who are you quoting? If you use a quote or idea from Michael Stevens, be sure to introduce HIM as your source. On the other hand, if you use a quote or idea from Jessica Lahey, author of the article on VSauce, be sure to introduce HER as your source.

Source Citation: Make sure to give an MLA-style citation for any quotes. This is our first chance to discuss MLA citation, so it’s helpful for me to see what you already know.

Paragraph Transitions

Two principles of strong paragraphing:

1. Each ¶ should have a clear sense of mission: what it does and (therefore) what it leaves for other ¶s to do.
2. Each ¶ should present its mission as responding to the prior one in some specific way.

There are lots of ways for a new ¶ to respond to the prior ¶. Here are several (click here for a more complete list):

• Explain: make sense of something described just above.
• Build on: introduce the next step in a logical argument.
• New angle: for example, you might consider sound after focusing on visuals.
• Zoom in: look at an instance of a trend or pattern noted just above.
• Zoom out: name the pattern which the prior ¶’s topic is an example of.

Two further transitions used when telling a story:

• Result: what happened next.
• Lateral shift in space: “Meanwhile. back at the ranch…”

Reading

To provide us with an example for discussion, read the following, from an article published last year in The Atlantic

What Teachers Can Learn From Vsauce’s YouTube Show

by Jessica Lahey, OCT 28, 2014

When I told my sons, ages 11 and 15, that I would be interviewing a series of unconventional and inspiring educators about their teaching methods, they insisted—nay, demanded—that I sit down with them and watch their favorite teacher, Michael Stevens, host of the wildly popular YouTube education channel Vsauce.

They queued up their favorite episodes, “What If The Earth Stopped Spinning?” “What If the Moon Was a Disco Ball?” and “Why Are Things Creepy?” These particular videos have been viewed an average of 4 million times each, so my sons are clearly not the only Vsauce enthusiasts out there. Far from it—Stevens’ Vsauce channel boasts nearly 8 million subscribers and 700 million views.

Three hours and two bowls of popcorn later, I’d become yet another number in the Vsauce subscription and view counter, and I’d also pieced together some theories on what makes Michael Stevens such an effective and popular teacher.

Stevens understands that the best teachers don’t just hurl vast shovelfuls of wisdom at their students, hoping some of it sticks as it whizzes by. Great teachers know that education is a long game, and much of the time, the lesson at hand is not the final destination but an opportunity to contextualize and support future learning. Stevens does hurl a lot of information at his viewers, but he also creates a massive net for his audience so they will be able to catch and hold on to his teaching.

For example, in the video, “What If Everyone Jumped at Once?” (14 million views), Stevens opens with a simple, yet intriguing (not to mention highly clickable) question. While he dangles the promise of an answer for his viewers (which—spoiler alert!—turns out to be “not much”), arriving at an answer isn’t really his goal. During his seven-minute examination of the question, Stevens bushwhacks through a wide range of related topics, including the population and mass of the earth, geology, geography, seismology, the etymology of the word “decimate,” Dunbar’s number, Newton’s Third Law, human lifespan, and the collective and individual power of human beings—in this case of this particular video, the power of Felicia Day.

Stevens refers to these zigs and zags across disciplines as “hooks,” or opportunities to build, reinforce, and retain, new knowledge. He builds on the knowledge he imparts with new knowledge, and before you know it, you’ve learned a lot about a huge range of subjects. That knowledge is durable because he’s connected it to real-world contexts. You don’t learn from a Vsauce video because you put out a lot of effort to do so; you learn because Stevens makes the information matter. This, Stevens explained to me, is his cardinal rule: “to teach so that people don’t even know that they are learning.”

[Lahey goes on to list several other educational strategies discussed by Stevens during their interview. You may find a useful insight or contrasting viewpoint, so please do check out the full article.]

Exercise

There are six paragraphs in Lahey’s article. On a piece of scratch paper, write down the type of transition used by Lahey at the start of paragraphs #2 through #6 (for types of transition, see the two lists at the top of this page).

Before pasting your answer in the comments, read the answers given by other students. If you see an answer you agree with, click the reply button on their answer and say “I Agree”. If you don’t see anyone who’s given your answer already, use the main comment box instead.

Purposeful Comparison

“Write a paper comparing and contrasting …” When I got this sort of assignment back in high school, I’d find myself wondering “Why? What’s the point? Is this just an exercise to demonstrate my intellectual agility, or am I comparing these two poems/stories/laws to actually learn something?”

The answer, of course, is that you should be learning something any time you engage in comparative analysis. But teachers will often leave it up to you to work out the goal of the comparison. After all, to voice the comparison’s goal is to state the resulting essay’s thesis and most teachers leave the choice of thesis up to the student.

For today’s homework, I’d like you to identify a video on YouTube that offers an illuminating point of comparison for one of the three videos we watched for class 1.2: Vi Hart, Nerdwriter, or Idea Channel. Two strategies for choosing a video:

1. You might find a second video that is similar in many respects but different in just one crucial quality, allowing you to estimate the significance of that quality. For example, two science-oriented video series with nerdy but personable hosts, one produced in front of a green screen, the other in a different location every week.
2. You might find a second video that is different in almost every respect except one key factor. In this case, illuminating insights come from discovering that the significance of that key similarity, despite the many differences. For example, you might learn something about the importance of rapid delivery in your science-oriented video by comparing it to the equally rapid pace of a video series focused on HBO’s Game of Thrones.
   

   Assignent Format

   Here’s one way to do this assignment, in three paragraphs:

   1. A ¶ introducing one of the videos. What makes it interesting, worthy of our attention? Is it typical? Unusual? In what way? This ¶ is also your opportunity to give a brief but vivid description of the video: its purpose, approach. Don’t feel you need to tell us everything, but just 3-5 vital details, enough so we could pick your video out of a lineup.
   2. A ¶ discussing the video you’re introducing for comparison (open with a strong transition sentence introducing this instance: “By contrast, …” or “But this isn’t the only way to … ” or the like). This ¶ should focus almost exclusively on the second video, noting its many similarities but emphasizing its one crucial difference—or its many differences but one crucial similarity.
   3. Another standard-length ¶ pressing home an insight that aries as result of this comparison. It may be an insight about your first video—how it works, why it’s so effective. But it may be an insight about videos more generally—what makes them such great medium for education, or perhaps why they are ultimately limited in what they can achieve.
      

   At the end of your piece, please include links to the two videos you’re comparing.

Deepening Analysis

Last time for HW you wrote two paragraphs discussing one of three educational videos. This time I’d like you to create a 2-¶ sequence where the second ¶ bounces in some way off the first one. I’m especially interested in seeing one of the “Analytic” rather than one of the “Narrative” transitions from our list of ¶ transitions.

To make the discussion more lively, please choose a video to write on from any of the thousands (millions?) of educational pieces on YouTube.

Several guidelines:

• For clarity of formatting, please put two returns between the ¶s.
• For clarity of understanding, try to phrase the opening sentence of your new ¶ so as to signal to the reader how it improves on, or complicates, or perhaps even undercuts the point you made in your earlier analysis.
• Do include a fresh link to the video you’re discussing.
• Finally, beneath your video link, name the paragraph transition you see between your ¶s.

Hamlet Essay Intro

Write a 1-2 ¶ intro for your Hamlet essay.

Start by re-reading the essay prompt. What character/argument from Shakespeare’s play do you want to focus on? Choose one that will allow you to speak to the very different appeals made by Castiglione and Machiavelli. Then find passages from those two writers that speak to the argument you’ve chosen from Shakespeare’s play.

Open your intro with a tight focus on the character you plan to focus on—or start with something more famous from the play that might serve as an interesting backdrop for the character/passage you’ve chosen. Around the intro’s midpoint, voice some preliminary understanding, then use the final sentences to express your thesis claim as a deeper understanding that complicates or undercuts the prelim U.

Paste the results in the comments section, below.

A Gift in One Hand, a Knife in the Other

In Social Science this past week you’ve read all of Machiavelli’s Prince. For class today I want to focus on passages that strike you as significant for thinking about Shakespeare’s portrait of court life in Hamlet. Go back through your Soc Sci reading, and then transcribe a short but significant passage from Machiavelli into the comment box below. Then reply to that comment with a 2-¶ writeup. Use the first ¶ to discuss what Machiavelli is arguing in that passage, perhaps clarifying its meaning by reference to the issues and concerns in the larger context of the book. Use the second ¶ to discuss how this passage is relevant for Hamlet.

People not enrolled in Social Science have my permission to do this assignment focusing on JUST the passages I’ve excerpted from Machiavelli on the Unit 4 Assignment Page—look down in the comments. But before doing the assignment, see if you can get someone who IS in Corrin Social Science to give you a brief run-down on what Machiavelli is up to in The Prince.

Finally, as an aid for anyone who doesn’t have the Social Science reader, I’ve scanned a large portion of The Prince and uploaded it to the CourseDocs site.

The Rhetoric of Infographics

Last time we touched on how graphics differ from narrative reporting. Here’s an interesting contrast, between a global warming piece published in Rolling Stone Magazine and an infographic based on information in that article.

Skim through the article and then look at the infographic. Write a short ¶ comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Be specific: if you think the article is effective, identify particular elements that you found impressive and try to say something about how or why. Paste your response in the comments.

Bonus—two more infographics on climate change:

• Visualizing the Warmest August in 136 Years
• A Timeline of Earth’s Average Temperature Since the Last Ice Age Glaciation

You needn’t write anything about these two graphics, but check them both out and come to class prepared to discuss!