Fall 2017 - Professor Kate Poirier

Author: Violanda

Research Article-Violanda

Title: The Graphics Calculator and Student’s Solution Strategies
Author(s): Egbert Harskamp, Cor Suhre, and Anno Van Streun

This article is about  whether the integration of graphic calculators into mathematics affect students’ performance in the school in the area of functions and calculus. This is a research that was made in 1995-1996 in 12 Grade 10 classes. The classes were split into 3 groups: the first experimental group, the second experimental group and the control group.There were three classes that work with graphing calculators almost the entire school year, five classes that work with graphing calculators for just few months and four classes that were not allowed to use graphing calculators .They also took a pretest at the beginning of the school year and a posttest at the end of the school year. There were four categories in which students did their problems; Algorithmic ( solving equations,calculating the coordinates of a point in a graph of a function,etc), Graphical strategies ( plotting and drawing either with graphical calculators or by hand),Heuristic (students use a table of values of x and y to  graph a certain function),No solution (this is the case where students omitted to answer a question).Based on this the results showed that the uses of the calculator increased student’s use of graphical strategies. Also the posttest results showed that students who use graphing calculators were tended to solve more problems and to get higher grades on the test.  This research also bring a table were it explains that students that did use graphing calculators for the entire year were less likely to live a question with no solution.However, Students who were not allowed to use graphing calculators have a high percentage of leaving the question blank.

Why do students do better in testes when they use graphing calculators?

Students from the first experiment group who have used graphing calculators for the whole school year tended to do better in the final test than the other groups.There are some reasons why the group who used graphing calculators did better that the group who didn’t use graphing calculators.

First, graphing calculator saves the time.in the table with the results, it is shown that 39% of students who didn’t use graphing calculators left the answer blank.However, only 14% of group who used the calculators left the questions blank.Since, the study was made to classes who were dealing with graphing function, to graph a function by hand may take a lot of time to graph it depends on the function.So, they spend their timing on graphing certain functions, and they didn’t have time to do the rest of the work. However, the other group, had enough time to finish all of the work because graphing calculator does its work very quick.

Working on a problem by hand, students are more likely to make mistakes that solving that problem in the calculator. This is another reason why students who use graphing calculator do better than students who don’t use them during the test.

Third, during the class, teachers and students can go over more problems when there is a use of graphing calculators calculators.So, basically these students can practice more problems than the other group because of the limitation of the time.

Does the use of graphing calculators help weak students to profit more in the class?

 

 

#1 Project

The Transformation of the graph of quadratic function ax^(2) when a=1>0

In this lesson, i want to teach the transformation of quadratic function x^2 .I want to start the lesson by recalling quadratic equations, what is a quadratic equation, its standard form and when does a quadratic equation become a quadratic function. My goal for this lesson is to compare the original function y=x^2 with the graphs that we will get by shifting them horizontally and vertically , which at the end will make students to understand the point called vertex and the formula that helps to find a vertex. I also with use the blackboard plug values in the function, so I may ask students any question related to that.

Here is how the graphs on Desmos will look:

Introducing Violanda Lubani

My name is Violanda Lubani. I am from Montenegro ( a small country in Southeastern Europe) , but my ethnicity is Albanian. I came to United States three years ago with my family.

I speak Albanian , English , and I understand and speak a little Spanish ( I learned it from “Telenovelas” – Spanish movies).

I became interested in Math since I was in the first grade, and when I was in junior high I became even more interested because I had a professor that was very difficult and hard grader. So, in order to get a good grade,I had to work really hard, and all that work made me like math even more.  I choose to become a Math teacher for many reasons. First reason is to complete my father’s wish. Second reason is that I like Math,and I like to teach it to students. And the third one is that I want to convince future generations that Math is not that difficult and that is a language itself that is beautiful.

My favorite math topic is Calculus, and my least favorite math topic is Probability & Statistics.

I used Maple in Math1476l, and Matlab in Math 2630! I would be interested in learning any technology that is relating to Math even though that I am not a person that likes technology in general.

After I graduate I hope to work as a Math Teacher and Tutor .

Other things that I like to do beside Math are cooking and and going out with family and friends.