Watching math videos for credit
A question. For my freshmen algebra classes.
I love the Vi Hart videos. I like that Vi looks like the VI at the bottom of some clocks, or like the VI in VI Lenin. But mostly I like how fast she talks and how much she makes fun of math class while talking about nothing but math (and interesting tangent) and how cleverly she drops in cultural references and bad puns and so forth.
I also like the fruity platonic solids, and how to eat candy dots, and the music boxes made of paper, and, well, she’s just kind of cool, you know?
Is there a reason to make kids watch the mathy videos, other than me really liking them, and the elephants? How would I structure their use? Or unstructure them? Could I assign a four minute video for homework, and for “bonus” credit ask them to write up one detail that looked interesting or strange or compelling? Or ask them to