1/ 10/ 12

Tuesday January 10, 2012

Signed out TI- nspire !! Wowzah!

Calculators have two main areas. Scratchpad and Documents. Scratchpad is what most calculators can do (calculate and graph). Documents is a way to organize a lesson. Many of the aplications that are on the bottom of the calculator screen, we’re going to explore the same type of program but on the computer, then we’ll look at the calculator.

How are we going to learn about the calculator? We’re going to do it as a class, and we have the whole semester.

Ideas:

• Set aside part of the class period for people to introduce things that people have discovered.
• Groups share what they discover
• Split up the manual and have people share what they learn from the manual. (Link to manual online)
• Some type of systematic way where everyone can participate

There will be some type of an assignment along with learning about the calculators. We also have the navigator system that we need to learn how to use along with the calculators. Navigators connect to the top of the calculators. A third piece of equipment: calculator on the computer (probably?) so you can show what is happening on the computer screen so the class can follow along.

Split manual into sections. Our group is doing “Scratchpad”. Two points for next time.

Jessica: page 22- 24 about graphing

Heather: page 19- 21 about graphing

Joe and Katie: Calculating part of Scratchpad

Virtual Manipulatives class discussion:

They were very passionate about differentiating between the different types of virtual manipulatives. Static and dynamic. Why is that?

• “It shouldn’t even be called a ‘manipulative’ because you can’t even move it. It’s just a picture”
• “Who was the ultimate authority that called a picture a manipluative? There must have been some teacher or someone somewhere who said ‘it’s on the computer, so it’s a virtual manipulative”

How do they define static and dynamic?

• page 2 “in our view a virtual manipulative is best defined as an interactive, Web- based visual representation of a dynamic object that presents opportunities for constructing mathematical knowledge”
• needs to be usable to get at important mathematics.

Any statistics to the access that students have to the Internet in our public schools? It’s a great tool, but it’s not good if students don’t have access, either at school or at home.

• students use more technology now than in the past
  • but who does that privilege? some have access and some do
• 2005- 94% of classrooms had access to computers in the classrooms.
  • most classrooms don’t have classroom sets of computers, but there is usually at least one computer in a classroom, and there’s usually at least one computer lab in the school
• all students should have access to the internet

What programs are there that are useful to people/ students that are real virtual manipulatives?

• “let it snow”
  • not mathematical, but it’s still a virtual manipulative. The definition given was restrictive to mathematics “as if no other subject can have a virtual manipulatives” haha
• NLVM

The idea is that a virtual manipulative is something that can run through the browser, are easily accessible, and easily learned. It shouldn’t take more than a minute or two to figure out how in functions (it might take a while to solve problems, or use it, but not long to figure out how to move things around).

Do teachers have to search and find these manipulatives?

• think “hum, there must be a VM that can help me teach this subject”
• then spend time looking online for it
• pay attention to

VM are good, but how much are teachers going to use them until it hurts the students?

• VM by it self is never good for learning
• use VM to accomplish something
• how you use it/ teach with it makes a difference
• VM not going to accomplish teaching on its own
• make sure to talk about why the VM is important and why it was used
• explanation