computer based math tools

Last week I learned about two more ways to engage students in math. We played with a couple of very neat math utilities: Fathom and Geometer's Sketchpad. What great classroom resources these would be! Geometer's Sketchpad looks like a particularly versatile tool that, according to its website, can help kids learn everything from geometry and algebra to proofs. For geometry, creating geometric shapes to fit over a clown's features - using only a limited number of available shapes - was a challenging exercise even for an adult! It really forced you to remember and apply your knowledge of the properties of geometric shapes.

Two questions I have are: 1) in what way can Geometer's Sketchpad facilitate algebra learning and 2) how much does it cost (I think this was mentioned, but I've forgotten). The next time I have free time on campus, I think I'll try and explore ways in which Geometer's Sketchpad can help students learn or practice algebra. If the algebra functions are as engrossing as the geometry exercise was, I think they'd be very useful in a middle level math class.

One implication for classroom practice is how to best utilize Geometer's Sketchpad when you only have a couple computers available for classroom use. Perhaps it would be best utilized as enrichment or remediation tool in that case - although if the software has a high pricetag, you'd probably want every student to have access.

tangrams

This past week we had fun with yet another completely engaging math lesson - firing cotton ball "frogs" from paper clip launchers, then tracking the absolute and linear distances they traveled. While this way of teaching about distance was both fun and new to me, what I really appreciated about last week's class was learning how to use tangrams. I'd never worked with them before and knew nothing about them. In class, we used a set of tangrams to create a giraffe figure, then tried to construct a giraffe twice the size with multiple sets. This was not easy!

As I mentioned above, I'd never used tangrams before this class, and one question I have is about other classroom applications. They seem to do a good job of fostering spatial thinking. Do they have any applications at the 4th grade level? I'm wondering about a use that might help my main placement kids remember geometric shapes and their properties. Since the tangrams are geometric shapes they've studied, it might be a useful way to use them in my classroom.

The implications for classroom practice that I see are more engaging ways to get kids to connect to math. The exercise of doubling the size of the giraffe was very challenging -- my group never got there, in fact -- but was also very engrossing, no one wanted to stop trying!