Day 6 Vlog

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Description: MIT 20.219 Becoming the Next Bill Nye: Writing and Hosting the Educational Show, IAP 2015. View the complete course: http://ocw.mit.edu/20-219IAP15.

Instructor: Yuliya Klochan

License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

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SPEAKER: So after perhaps the fourth draft of my script, the world is beginning to look like a fractal, which is in a way cool, because even the creation of a script, if you think about it, is a fractal. I've been creating all these drafts that are very similar, and it seems that the script writing process has been endless and infinite. But hopefully it will and. I'm actually enjoying it at this point, even though it has been a lot of the same thing. But every day, I come back and I do more research on fractals, and I learn many cool things, which then makes the decision of what to put in the video and what to take out a lot more difficult.

But I managed to cut it down to about 600 words at this point, which clocks at around four minutes and 10 seconds in a fast rate, so that does give me a bit of leeway. I can't really think of other things I could add, though I can certainly see some things I could take out that I wouldn't want to take out, but that's always been the biggest struggle, because there's so much cool associated with fractals.

And there is a reason why I started seeing the whole world as a fractal, because there are so many patterns and repetitions in everything. Right now, I'm looking at my corkboard, and it's a fractal. And the walls of east campus look pretty random, but I'm sure there's some repetitions there.

And this makes math really cool, because essentially, it is the study of patterns, and as long as you can discover those patterns, you can then apply them to solve real-world problems, which is what I wanted to convey to the viewer because that's not the side of mathematics people usually learn. And when you tell them that, in math, we study patterns and we use them to solve problems, that's often surprising because we are taught so many tools in school, that we don't even think about how to apply them usually. And I think that's very sad, because it's the applications that make math really cool, or otherwise the concepts that are not really offered at school, like infinity.

So that's about the video. Today's class was a lot of fun. I know I mentioned that I was excited for the critique, but there was still a bit of a concern that I wouldn't handle it very well, that it would be somehow a saddening or worrisome experience, which really wasn't like that at all. I appreciated all the things that were said. I suspected more criticism, because that may have been more helpful, but in the end, I came back home, I looked over all of the comments from constructors, and they made a lot more sense after the session when people actually said them out loud.

And I also looked at the suggestions by my classmates. And even though the structure of the video and most of the words are different from what it was at the beginning of the day, a lot of those suggestions are still a part of it. And hopefully I was able to incorporate them all. I checked, but like I said, the script changed so much that it's difficult to pinpoint the minor changes. And I guess my biggest concern was the overall structure, and that's something I felt was a bit off when I originally wrote the script, but I also thought that I could improve that by showing a lot of cool images and animations, which isn't how it works.

So, I am happy that I got to cut it down. That's something I've always enjoyed with every piece of writing I've done-- cutting out the unnecessary words, to me, has always seemed like the most necessary thing to do. At least that's the way I was taught, because five years ago, I would write sentences that had three or four adjectives in a row that I thought were absolutely essential to the story, and if you introduced a character, you had to describe all of his or her clothing.

So I learned the hard way that that really wasn't the way to do things, and I thought I learned that lesson, but I'm still learning five years later to cut things out and sacrifice what I think is absolutely essential. Except this time it's not four adjectives but it's a ton of fun math facts that to me are absolutely amazing, but to others are probably overwhelming, because they have five minutes to learn about this stuff, and I had hours.

But, hours were spent to cut things down, and they have been cut. I'm really glad with the way the class has made me feel about my writing abilities. I guess it was nice to see my weaknesses and my strengths, because now I understand better how to describe mathematical concepts. I always felt-- I always went for the really abstract, shock value kind of math facts, but that's not what I've been trying to do with the video, and that is really nice.

And I always go back to the conversations that I had with the sixth graders and just remember them and the things they were interested and the vocabulary they knew. So that was an essential learning experiences-- an essential learning experience. That said, I don't think I have anything to add at this point. Looking forward to more comments on the script. Hopefully there are fewer of them this time. Although, I can probably think of ways to improve the script, and I can definitely do that again tomorrow, if necessary. With the absence of the final statement, I end this. Farewell.

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