E1 classroom video discussion

I don't miss physics teaching, and I never look at physics instructors and think of what I would want to do in their shoes.  They're not my shoes.  I do love leading discussions of video, though, so I was happy to agree to do that in E1 today.  It was the Leaves in the Street video (we never get tired of it).  As usual, I came with not only the captioned video and my own thoughts, but also a page of discussion questions, in case the teachers didn't find much to talk about.  That was not needed.  On just one viewing, the teachers raised the following terrific issues, which I was compelled to write on the board.  I'll try to remember to post the photo of what I wrote, but until then, here's my recollection:

1. The students seem to be bringing a lot of prior experience and knowledge in to the discussion, often in the form of productive analogies.
2. The collaborative format of the conversation seems to be causing an evolution of the students' ideas.
3. The students seem to be conceptualizing energy as being various different kinds of things - wind, etc.
4. The students seem to be thinking of energy as being mainly stored and used - stored in fuel, and used by machines or by living things.
5. There is a free sharing of ideas.

There were five excellent topics and five tables, so on a whim I assigned one topic to each table.  I asked them to watch and discuss the video again, this time keeping their minds on their specific topic.  Then (without large group discussion in between) I asked them to watch and discuss the movie again, still targeting their specific issue, and this time prepare a white board to share their ideas and the evidence for those ideas with the rest of the class.  We had short presentations which were just great.  (I'll post their white boards here when they're available.) Then I presented my AAPT talk ("Intuitive ontologies for energy in physics"), hoping to position it as kind of being "my white board," though obviously much more prepared since it was for my professional community.  It was a good opportunity to share a research presentation with them.

Part of what made this activity a great time for me was that the teachers spontaneously focused on what they were observing in the video, without judgment or pedagogical fantasies; they talked about what happened, not about what they thought should have happened or would have happened if they had done it or whatever.  That hasn't always happened with video conversations I've led.  The difficulty has been useful for establishing norms for discussion, but still, it's a lot more fun when it all goes well from the beginning.  I tried to remember to compliment them on their nonjudgmental attention to the events.