Bridget's Journey

A mathematical road trip from Montreal to Kitchener. Eight hours, one camera. on Prezi

This story is about the math found on a road trip from Montreal, Quebec to Kitchener, Ontario. It is an attempt to get students entering middle school to pay closer attention to their surrounding and see math as a subject area, which has a day-to-day impact on their lives.  I originally tried to make it into a classic story but it was like fitting a square peg into a round hole. As a math teacher I try to link literature and math and have been generally disappointed in “math stories” that I have found. This experience really made me see the difficulty is creating a story that is both engaging and math related. It has altered my perspective and got the gears going for something in the future.

This was one of the more difficult tasks for me as, although I am an avid reader and have read countless children’s books to my kids, I am not a natural storyteller.  My background of math and science has made me much more comfortable in reporting facts and has not done much to nurture my creative side.  Pedagogically, it is always important to help students see the links between subject areas and encourage them to be creative.

After perusing the options available and trialing a few, a decision had to made so I chose Prezi.  I knew that I wanted a slide show with a twist and it looked like I could manipulate objects and bring focus to the more important items. It is difficult to choose a program based on a quick review and I always find that full immersion will bring out the best and worst of a program.

Telling a story is a clean, logical, way to transfer information while providing entertainment. It can clarify and strengthen connections between concepts and cater to a different type of learner.  I use the fable, “A Grain of Rice” to introduce exponents to my students and it has a big impact as they immediately see the impact of exponential growth.

I look at digital storytelling as being quite different from reading from a book. Digital storytelling is less interactive and I find this to be one of the biggest limitations. Reading out loud to students always involves a two-way dialogue in which ideas are clarified and ideas as to how the story might end are entertained.