Capturing Time (musically)

Recently, I had the idea to do a theme of "song lengths" over at Estimation 180. Inspired by a recent comment from Fawn, I chose Santana's Oye Como Va. At first, I opened up iTunes and took a screen shot of the music player.  I threw in an album cover and edited it to look like this, asking "How long is Santana's Oye Como Va?":

I can get away with directly asking the question at Estimation 180. How would you make your estimate? I'd make my estimate based on the time played so far (1:26) and the location of the playhead in the timeline. I absolutely love that students have to use time here, specifically 60 seconds in a minute. Furthermore, I'm hoping students use some type of spatial reasoning with the timeline, either as a fraction, percentage, proportion, or something else. But that's it. Can we go anywhere else with this? This task feels constrained. This doesn't capture the medium of music correctly. There's got to be more, right?

The more I thought about it, I was curious of better ways (or the best way) to capture time and music. Let me rephrase that. If I were going for a more perplexing approach and wanted to create a 3 Act task to share at 101qs.com, how would I go about doing that? I remembered that I own the djay app and experimented with a really lengthy Jethro Tull song titled, Thick As A Brick. This is where I need your help. I'd appreciate you checking out Act 1 and letting me know the first question that comes to mind. Or watch it here and leave a comment/question in the comments.

Based on some initial questions, I'm thinking of revising Act 1 where the virtual record player looks more like this. (notice the record?)

The virtual record player opens up many possibilities with this task. There's a white tape marker on the record for precise tracking when playing the track. I feel there's a lot more math opportunities here, but at the same time it feels a little contrived?
Am I over-thinking this?
What do you see here?
What are your thoughts?
I need some help. Thanks in advance.

Spin it,
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Buses [Day 2]

Woah!!! We saw six buses today on our way to preschool. You might want to check out the Buses [Day 1] post from two days ago to understand the context of what's ahead. I was a little late to the bus-counting action on our way to preschool today so here's our first exchange.

Me: Have you seen any buses today?

Son (who turns 3 in a month): Yes. One.

Me: Was it a city or school bus?

Son: City. 

Me: Okay, we'll have to look for more buses today.

We immediately saw another city bus, bringing our total buses to two on the day. A little bit down the road was another city bus heading in the oposite direction.

Me: I see something on the other side of the road coming this way. What is it?

Son: It's another bus!! A city bus!

Me: How many total buses have we seen today? 

Son: Three.

Me: Good.

We continue along and a shorter city bus passes us. I don't point it out, but he spots it.

Son: There's another bus. 

Me: You're right. Wow! Now, how many buses have we seen?

Son: Hmph.

I pause and wait for him to process the question. Keep in mind, this is happening while I'm driving and he's in the backseat so I can't turn around to talk with him.

Son: Hmph

If I get a second "hmph" I know he doesn't have an answer and won't come up with one. Trust me, I've waited for long periods of time and will just continue to hear his cute little "hmph."

Me: Well, we already saw three buses and now we saw one more. What number comes after three?

Son: (whispering to self: one, two, three) Four.

Me: Good. So how many buses have we seen?

Son: Four.

Surprisingly, we hadn't seen a school bus yet. We were at our last red light and there it was in all its glorious mustardy-yellowy paint, a school bus. He exclaims, "A school bus!" Since we're at a red light, I turn around and ask how many buses have we seen. I get the two "hmph" count. I hold up one hand with four fingers up and the other hand with one finger up.

Me: We saw four city buses and now one school bus. How many buses have we seen today?

Son: Three

Did we just have a flashback (regression) to Tuesday?

Me: We did see three buses today, you're right. But, I think we've seen more. Count the fingers.

Son: One,... Two,... Three,... Five.

The light turns green and I have to go. I'm curious about him skipping 'four' and still landing on the correct number of buses. Seriously, what's up with that? I mumble to myself, "That's odd that he skipped four." Right as we're about to pull into the preschool parking lot, another school bus goes whizzing by in the opposite direction. He exclaims, "Another school bus!" Wow! We saw six school buses today, so I'm thinking we park the car and quickly review this last school bus.

Me: Wow! We just saw another school bus. We saw a lot of buses today. We saw five buses and now we saw one more. How many total buses did we see today?

Son: Hmph. (x2)

I hold up one hand with all five fingers up and the other hand with one finger up.

Me: So we saw five buses and we just saw another bus. Count the fingers.

Son: One,... Two,... Three,... Four,... Six.

Me: You're right. What happened to five?

He giggles! I do too because it's contagious. Seriously, what's up with this? He answered the correct number, but skipped the number directly preceding it. TWICE! He's happy he saw so many buses today. I am too. He's content with landing on the correct number. I'm perplexed.

Hmph,
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BTW. Thanks Christopher Danielson, for continuing to inspire me to have (and cherish) these conversations with my son.

Dancing with the Functions

I'm honored and humbled to have been a (small) part of Christopher Danielson's online course The Mathematics in School Curriculum: Functions. There were some great tasks, discussions, and contributors. I now have a better misunderstanding of functions. However you interpret that last sentence, let me assure you that this two week course broke me down in order to give me a better perspective and idea of functions. Professor Triangleman moderated the course well, provided challenging tasks and opportunities that took me out of my comfort zone, encouraged us to think differently, and didn't hesitate to whip us into shape as you can see here:

He's referring to beating me down while informing the teacher's pet (Fawn) of his tactic.

Our choices for our final project were:

• a blog post,
• a lesson plan,
• an interpretive dance,
• a work of visual art,
• etc.

I thought writing a blog post was "too easy" in the sense that I could blog about anything ordinary at anytime. This class wasn't ordinary though, and I felt I'd rather try and give something back to the class, professor, and community in exchange for what I have received. No Fawn, not because I'm "too lazy." Therefore, I'm going to give you a lesson idea I have, based on an interpretive dance, which might be a work of visual art, all wrapped up in a blog post.

Interpretive dance really got me thinking. I thought back to the handful of dance lessons my wife (fiance at the time) and I took to practice for the First Dance at our wedding. My wife was a natural. As for me, well let's just say all the dance lessons in a lifetime wouldn't have helped. Here's a dance photo I have of us where it actually looks like I'm doing something worthy. Don't be fooled.

Don't worry, I won't torture you with video. Anyway, our dance instructor taught us many helpful tips and gave us a glimpse of dances like swing, salsa, the waltz, and the two-step box. We only did a few moves in our wedding dance, but it mainly revolved around the two-step box. We had a short song, thank goodness. I'm sure our guests would have taken their gifts back had they seen me dance any longer.

Here comes my lesson idea. I'd like to see the relationship between the number of steps taken in a dance over time. So let's make it a graphing story. Here's the first 30 seconds of a dance. Write a story for it. Even better, can you write the functions (along with any intervals, domains, ranges, etc)? Go here to Desmos to check your answers. I give you my interpretive dance.

Thanks to Sadie, Timon, and Michael Pershan for inviting me to their hangouts. I was honored to collaborate with you guys during one of the hangouts and bounce ideas off of each other. Thanks to Fawn for getting me in trouble, ratting me out to the teacher, and reminding me to submit my final project. Where would I be without you? Probably in class and not in the principal's office.

I would love some feedback on this lesson idea. Would you have your students dance? If so, what dance(s)? Would you have students come up with a function for each type of dance? What kind of relationships would you have your students look for? Would you consider "dancing" an applicable use of functions? I leave you with this clip. You must give these guys (Sean and John Scott) some crazy respect. They're insanely fantastic at tap-dancing. Just watch the first minute. Then make a graphing story.

Dance,
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