Tag Archives: Dynamic Number

Educational Technology, Math Software

Learn to Multiply Like No Bunny’s Business

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It started with an unassuming bunny that hopped along a number line. Jump AlongIn 2011, our team at KCP Technologies released Sketchpad Explorer for the iPad, making it possible for teachers and students to interact with desktop Sketchpad models on their iPads. We were thrilled to bring the iPad’s … Continue Reading ››
Math Software

Introducing the Dynamic Number Project

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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. Dynamic NumberContinue Reading ››
Common Core, Educational Technology, Geometric Functions, Math Software

Starting with Sketchpad Activities on Day One in High School

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In my previous two posts, I listed some of the new Dynamic Number project activities (for grades 2-5 and grades 5-8) that engage students in manipulating and investigating dynamic mathematical objects from day … Continue Reading ››
Common Core, Educational Technology, Math Software

Starting with Sketchpad Activities on Day One in Grades 5-8

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In the Dynamic Number project, one of our goals has been to create activities in which students actually experience mathematical objects by creating them, manipulating them, and investigating them. (George Lakoff and Rafael Núñez describe, in Where Mathematics Comes From, how students' abstract mathematical concepts are grounded in … Continue Reading ››
Educational Technology

Starting with Sketchpad Activities on Day One in Grades 2-5

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As an 18-year veteran teacher in Philadelphia public schools, my initial reaction when I first saw Sketchpad was “This would have completely changed the way I taught geometry.” I phrase it differently today: “This would have completely changed the way students experience mathematics.” a perspective that differs in two important details. First, I now understand that the … Continue Reading ››
Math Software

Revisiting a Childhood Addition Code with Sketchpad

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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 ››
Conferences

ICME: The Nature of Students’ Mathematical Thinking

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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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Geometric Functions, Math Software

Parents, Children, and Functions in Sketchpad

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Functions are hard for students. Students seem to master various families of functions – linear, polynomial, exponential, trigonometric, and so forth. They can graph them, evaluate them, transform them, and answer a variety of questions about them. But ask even our better students a question that’s out of the ordinary and we’re likely to be taken … Continue Reading ››