Set The Hook.
Follow me:
  • Home
  • Fishin' Solo Blog
  • MTBoS
  • Table Talk Math
  • The Classroom Chef
  • Would You Rather...?
  • Meet the Fisherman
    • Resume
  • Flipping 2.0
    • Flipping Your Classroom
    • Troubleshooting a flipped classroom
  • Choose Your Own Assessment
    • Student Work Samples
  • Apps In Class
  • Pre-made Math Lessons

I Gave In: Fidget Spinners

4/26/2017

1 Comment

 
Don't do it. They're just a fad. It's not going to be meaningful.

"Hey Stevens, I have a 3D printer and I'm doing a fidget toy lesson plan next week. Wanna help me out?"

​Sure. Let's do this. But if I'm going to do it, I want to be mindful of how and why​.

Love it or hate it, I've embraced it. Fidget Spinner #3dprinting lesson plan is created and the printing commences tonight.#mtbos pic.twitter.com/pCP8nXbDwn

— John Stevens (@Jstevens009) April 26, 2017
The Integrated-II teacher who reached out to me is a gamer anyways, so he didn't really need my help, but he asked and I said yes. All that meant to me was that I needed to get to work.

With a couple days and some patience, I came up with a lesson plan that went along with the handout. The goal was to design a lesson that didn't get too deep into the hysteria of the "what's popular now" and more into the math of why things succeed and why they fail.

​There was some fair pushback:

@MathDenisNJ @Jstevens009 @burgessdave @burgess_shelley @airwolf3d Also wondering if the fidget spinners want math as bad as math wants the fidget spinners.

— Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) April 26, 2017
To answer your question, Dan, no. Fidget spinners will certainly outlast math's desire to stay in sync with its popularity, and I'm OK with that. Just like everything else before it, spinners are popular because they're fun, they're new, and they're engaging. Meanwhile, math has a hard time being any of those three, let alone all of them together. Fidget spinners will fade into the abyss and something new will come along, no doubt.

The latest fad doesn't need math's help to stay exciting, and I'm not lobbying for it to do so. What I am lobbying for is for kids to have an opportunity to:

  • Take ownership and design their own
  • Understand why some designs don't work
  • Understand why other designs work better
  • Help kids figure out why they cost so darned much
  • Relate their current interest to a course they're already in
  • Use 3D printing (or any form of creation) to make a design into reality

Is this a cheap shot? I don't think so. People (including me) gripe about the cost of products on Etsy, or handmade fashions, all the time. Little do they know how much time and energy the one-off products take. "Oh that's OK, I'll just print a bunch of them and it'll be all good." This is great, as long as you have people lining up to buy.

On a personal level, this is turning into a lesson on perseverance. I erroneously measured the bearings to be 5/8" and they are really 7/8", so I'm going back to the printer to try again. While it was a boneheaded move, it's one that I know kids are going to make... no, that's not why I made it.
Picture
Happy "Giving In" Fishing
1 Comment
Dan Meyer link
4/27/2017 06:05:13 am

Thanks for breaking down your thinking here. Clarifying: do students walk away from the printer with a working spinner? That <em>does</em> seem pretty slick. I suppose if that's true, I'd want to play with the different circular graphs to see if I could make one that spins better or faster or yadda yadda I don't really know what these things are but I can see the upside.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    Author

    Math nerds tend to have a reputation for being math nerds.  I'm here to continue that trend.

    For more blog posts, click HERE

    Picture

    Archives

    July 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012

    RSS Feed

Not that you would do anything crazy, but here:
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Photos used under Creative Commons from timlewisnm, leppre, KristinNador, Jarosław Pocztarski, Martin Pettitt