What Does Rowing Have to Do with Teaching Mathematics?
Introducing the Dynamic Number Project
Four years ago, my colleague Scott Steketee and I began brainstorming new Sketchpad activities for a National Science Foundation grant called Dynamic Number. Our goal was to use Sketchpad to make ideas from number, operation, early algebra, and algebra come alive through interactive models that emphasized conceptual understanding. 
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Continue Reading ››Revisiting a Childhood Addition Code with Sketchpad
As a fourth-grader in 1977, I had a love-hate relationship with my Addison-Wesley textbook. Its contents overflowed with arithmetic problems, but every so often an entertaining brainteaser appeared to break the monotony of drill practice. These puzzles were clearly marked: Each appeared in a box set aside from the main text and featured a bespectacled … Continue Reading ››
Polar Graphing
Using Sketchpad, it is very easy to start from scratch and create a polar graph. Here are the steps to create the graph shown on the right below.
- Choose Graph | Plot New Function.
- Use the Equation menu to choose r = f(θ).
- Type "c" (for "cos"), "2", and "th" (for "theta").
- Click OK.
- If your … Continue Reading ››
Cartesian and Polar Graphs
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Exponential Harmony with Sketchpad
Last week was the fourth session of my spring Advanced Secondary Math Methods class at the University of Pennsylvania. Each year I assign a semester project in which groups of three students use lesson-study techniques—on a small scale—to create, test, refine, teach, evaluate, and document specific shared instructional products, composed of a (possibly multi-day) lesson … Continue Reading ››
A Swan Song for Sweet Karen Coe
Today I leave for my first proper vacation in a year and a half. Last time I took such a vacation, Key sold its high school textbooks to Kendall Hunt and transformed from a publishing company to a educational technology company. This time I just hope to survive the end of the world. 🙂 Before … Continue Reading ››
Pass the Candy! Sweetening the Study of Probability
As part of our guest blog series, we bring you another post from Kathryn Shafer. A former middle school and high school math teacher, Kathy is now an 
Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Ball State University, Indiana. She's done a variety of … Continue Reading ››
Creating Origami Whirlpool Designs with Sketchpad
Tomoko Fuse is a Japanese origami artist whose designs are highly geometric. A Google search for her origami models reveals a plethora of boxes and intricate three-dimensional structures, many of which are folded from multiple sheets of … Continue Reading ››
ICME: The Nature of Students’ Mathematical Thinking
Like other enthusiasts of mathematics, I’m captivated by the way that mathematical ideas can explain things in the physical world around me, and by the way that I can carry out mathematical thought experiments in my mind and then apply the results to control my external physical environment.
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