Skip to main content

Help and Critique needed: GSP file

Hello friends.

This is what I've been doing this afternoon. It's a Geometer's Sketchpad file that I hope to use with my calc class when we talk about volumes of revolution. I tried to upload it using Javasketch for those of you that don't have GSP, but found out that JavaSketch doesn't support function plots, or pretty much anything I used to create the sketch. Typical.

Anyway, I'm looking for feedback. Play with the sketch, press the buttons, see what you think. Ideally, I'd like this to be along the lines of a Dan Meyer "What Can You Do With This" type activity, but I don't think I'm there yet.

It's not finished, mainly because I don't quite know how to create functions for the last 1.5 pictures. Any help is appreciated! Thanks, friends.

**UPDATE**
A new version is posted here. Thanks to iTeach in the comments section (@PersidaB on twitter) for coming up with cubic regressions for the lasat 2 pictures. I didn't think to use my graphing calculator...wanted to do it all in GSP and couldn't figure it out. Thanks again! More feedback is always welcome, too. :-)
Labels:

Comments

  1. iTeachMarch 14, 2010 at 4:03 PM

    I think I may have figured out a function for your last one. I will email you... I plotted points and did a cubic regression. The r^2 came out to .995.
    I LOVE the investigation. I am trying to do something like this later this year in my honors geo classes - to get them started on visualizing this way. I hope you don't mind if I "steal" parts of it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sue VanHattumMarch 14, 2010 at 6:48 PM

    I love it too. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sue VanHattumJanuary 23, 2014 at 3:04 PM

    I don't know how I saw it in 2010. I don't have geometer's sketchpad. I don't suppose you have a way to show it for those of us who don't have the program? I'm teaching volumes right now, and am very curious...

    ReplyDelete
  4. JessicaJanuary 23, 2014 at 4:48 PM

    Maybe you could save it to google drive and open it with (free) Sketchpad Explorer on the iPad?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Professional Goals

On my way to an evaluation team meeting today (I want to write more about that...but don't feel I can confidentially...one bad thing about being myself online and not having a blog pseudonym), I had a bit of a heart to heart with my boss (principal). You might think, "on the way" isn't very long...but picture 100+ outdoor stairs from the school building to the admin building where the meeting was being held...lol. Anyway, he was asking me how things were going, if I could believe that the year is already almost halfway over, and how time has flown in the 1.5ish years I've been in VA. He also mentioned that I have 30 more years to go before retiring. After that comment, he asked about my professional goals: When you're getting ready to retire, what do you hope to have accomplished/done? At first, I didn't know how to respond. I'm not much for long-term planning. I'm lucky to know and have decided that I indeed will be staying in VA for at leas...
7 comments
Read more

Reflections and Preparation: A Look Into the Socio-Emotional Learning Goals of a Teacher

* taps mic * Is this on?  I haven't been here in years , but there is so much that I have been reading, thinking about, and planning in the past few days.  I needed to get some of it out.  Maybe this will forever live in drafts, or maybe, just maybe, I'll be brave and #pushsend. I crawled out from under a rock and started using TweetDeck on my computer last week.  For years I have missed the #MTBoS community, but have felt that it was too overwhelming to keep up with on top of all the typical day to day activities.  Also, I joined Twitter back when I was one of two math teachers at my school.  That community was my lifeline during my first 3 years of teaching.  Now, I have a workroom filled with teachers in real life with whom I can and should collaborate.  The richness and depth of these workroom discussions are not usually the same as what I found online, but it is still critical to support and develop these relationships. Now comes to the r...
2 comments
Read more

ASL/English Vocabulary in the Math Classroom

My last semester in college, while I was student teaching, I had a class that emphasized different key topics in the field of Deaf Education.  One such topic was vocabulary development.  We all already knew that students who are deaf/hard of hearing have a lower vocabulary than their same-age hearing peers for a variety of reasons not least of which being their limited access to "incidental learning" that comes from listening to other people's conversations/tv/radio, etc.  In our class, we talked about ways to introduce new vocabulary in order to give students a more connected understanding of the new word in its five distinct forms. Picture Description/definition ASL sign (if applicable) English word (in print) Fingerspelling of English word I try to be conscious of this as I teach.  It's very difficult sometimes, and many of the math terms to not have standard ASL signs, so it is more difficult for the students to attach meaning and use the new term through f...
3 comments
Read more