Fall 2017 - Professor Kate Poirier

Month: October 2017 (Page 1 of 2)

Review of Teaching Math Using Technology

According to an article “Teaching Math Using Technology” by David Moss, he explains how technology is useful for students, parents, and teachers to do math. In his article, he include many helpful websites that students and teachers can use in classroom or at home to enhance their understanding of mathematics. There are websites that offer teachers many lesson plans, however sometimes it is a kind of hard to determine the value of some lesson plans.

By reading this article, I found many websites that I think will be helpful for me and for my future students as well. I think it is a good idea to use some of these websites to help students understand mathematical concepts more because students currently engage better to the topic when they use technology. Also, students can have fun learning math by playing math game instead of playing any other game that is not useful.

 

Teaching Math Using Technology

Geogebra round-up

You will have a Geogebra component on next Tuesday’s midterm. Here are the Geogebra projects from last year and from this year (including the samples I linked before). Take a look at each of them to see the Geogebra skills you’ll be required to demonstrate on the midterm.

Last year:

The Theorem of Menelaus

Ptolemy’s Theorem

Morley Theorem

Desargue’s Theorem

Napolean’s Theorem

Simson’s Theorem

Extended Law of Sines

Circumscribed circle and circumcenter

Angle bisector concurrence theorem

The medial triangle

This year:

HANAN

Angle bisector Concurrence Theorem

VIOLANDA

Circumscribed Circle & Circumcenter

YASMINE

(Geogebra link?)

 

Desmos round-up

Here are links to this year’s and last year’s Desmos projects. These are models for the types of Desmos skills you will need on next Tuesday’s midterm.

Last year:

Graphing a quadratic equation and finding the roots

Solving Inequalities

Trigonometry- The Unit Circle

Exponential Functions

Area Between Two Curves

Solving a system of linear/quadratic equation

Determining amplitude, period and phase shift of a wave

Transformations of a polygon in a 2 – coordinate plane

Graphs of linear functions: changing slope and y-intercepts

This year:

ZANIYA

Bar graphs

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/l729hqruyw

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/gjjuusjxwv

YASMINE

Inverse functions and their graphs

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/u19usu9ip4

HANAN

Solving Inequalities

(demos link?)

VIOLANDA

Transformations of the graph of y=x^2

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/8qx9sjryxd

Homework – Article/blog post review – Due Tuesday, October 31

There are lots of ways to consume information about technology in the classroom. Later in the semester, you will be reading and presenting formal research papers in the field. For this homework exercise, you’ll perform a much less formal review. Submit your findings as a post here on the OpenLab.

Instructions
  • Find an article or a blog post anywhere on the internet that discusses technology as a pedagogical tool.
  • Before you write your review, include a link to that article/post as a comment on this post to claim it as yours. Make sure none of your classmates have already chosen the same article/post.
  • Write a one- or two-paragraph summary of the article. (Write your summary so that when your classmates read it, they’ll know what the main points of the article are, and can decide whether they would like to read the article for themselves.)
  • Write a one- or two-paragraph statement expressing your opinion about the points made in the article. (You don’t have to be super precise here; you can discuss the points in the article whether you agree or disagree with them based on how they relate to your own experience.)
  • If the website where you found your article/post is not that of a well-known media organization, include one sentence about the kind of website it is. (For example, if you choose a blog post, the “About” section of the blog should tell you a bit about who the post author is.)
  • Submit your review, along with a link to your article/post as an OpenLab post. Title your post ” Review of [title of the article/post you’ve chosen].”
How to choose an article/blog post

You have some flexibility in terms of what you choose to review, but there are some rules you must follow:

  • Read a few different articles or blog posts before selecting one to review.
  • The article/post you choose must express an opinion about technology in the classroom, report on an academic study about technology in the classroom or discuss specific strategies for using technology as a pedagogical tool.
  • The article/post you choose should support its arguments with evidence.
  • The article/post you choose cannot simply report on a type of technology being used, or how widespread its use is. It cannot be a “how-to” guide for using a particular technology yourself.
  • The article/post you choose cannot be published by a company that is writing to promote its own product.
  • The article/post you choose should be long enough that it is insightful in some way.  Your summary/opinion should tell us why it is insightful.
  • The article/post you choose should be short enough that a fast reader could read it in under 15 minutes. (For example, you should not review a scholarly research article.)
  • If you have an article/post in mind and aren’t sure whether it is appropriate, link to it in the comments on this post and explain why you’re unsure. Leave enough time before the deadline to choose something else if I determine it’s not appropriate.
  • The article/post you choose should be written in English. If you find something that’s written in another language and that you’d really like to review, link to it in the comments on this post and explain why it appeals to you. Leave enough time before the deadline to choose something else if I determine it’s not appropriate.
Some resources

Note: some of these websites require a subscription to access articles, but will provide a selection for free to non-subscribers.

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Inside Higher Ed

New York Times Education Section

Los Angeles Times Education Setion

Washington Post Education Section

Slate

Math with Bad Drawings

dy/dan

 

 

GeoGebra construction steps slideshow

Recall our sample GeoGebra dynamic worksheet on Ceva’s Theorem. When you open the worksheet, it automatically takes you to slide 29/29 in the slideshow, but you can jump to slide 1 and scroll through them one by one. What you’re seeing is actually the construction of a single dynamic worksheet, one object at a time. (In this case, I think it is extremely helpful to see the dynamic worksheet built up like this, rather than just seeing the end result.) Actually, if I had selected slide 1 instead of 29 when I saved the .ggb file to upload, I wouldn’t have to jump to slide 1 in the dynamic worksheet.

If you’d like to add this feature to your own dynamic worksheet, all you have to do is turn on the Navigation Bar for Construction Steps.

In the desktop app:

  1. Click on the View menu
  2. Select Layout
  3. Select Preferences – Graphics from the top of the window (the icon is the overlapping green circle and blue triangle)
  4. Under Navigation Bar for Construction Steps, select Show (you can include the play button too if you’d like to automate the slideshow)

Then, when you upload your GeoGebra applet to the online GeoGeobra worksheet that you’re constructing, the navigation bar will appear as it does in the Ceva sample linked above.

I hope this helps with your GeoGebra projects. I can’t wait to see them!

Topics for Geogebra Project – Due Tuesday, October 24

Instructions for your Geogebra project can be found here.

Select one of the following topics and comment here with your selection to claim your topic. Check to make sure nobody else has chosen your topic.

  • The theorem of Menelaus (Venema Chapter 9)
  • Simpson’s theorem (Venema 11.6)
  • Ptolemy’s theorem (Venema 11.7)
  • Napoleon’s theorem and the Napoleon point (Venema 12.1)
  • Morley’s theorem (Venema 12.6)
  • Circumscribed circle and circumcenter (Venema 4.1)
  • Extended law of sines (Venema 4.1)
  • Angle bisector concurrence theorem (Venema 4.2)
  • The medial triangle (Venema Exercises 5.1.1 to 5.1.4)
  • Desargue’s theorem (Venema 11.2)

 

 

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