Fibonacci sequence snapshot 1
Fibonacci sequence | Still
Fibonacci sequence snapshot 2
Fibonacci sequence | Still 2

What Works

The above images are stills from a flash animation by textist. It is worth watching and blissfully silent. It does a great job of bringing dynamism to an online lesson. I have often thought about how Open Course Ware projects could be improved. Flash animations are one step above static content – here’s another that helps visually explain the sine curve. Good for teaching trigonometry.

Graph of the sine curve | Emerson and Talman
Graph of the sine curve | Emerson and Talman

What Needs Work

I realize that sociology doesn’t always lead itself to animations in the same ways that math and physics do. What needs work, in this case, is that I need to find a way to use animations to help understand social science teaching best practices, not math and engineering teaching best practices. Even though I wasn’t able to find something a bit more relevant to sociology, the increase in online and remote digital teaching is moving fast enough to warrant a post even though it’s not directly sociological yet.

References

Emerson and Talman. (1999) The Graph of the Sine Curve” at Mathematics Animated.

Allen, Dean (Texist). Fibonacci Sequence