Week 4

This week in MATHS 331, we didn't do much with our chosen technologies, but were instead able to play with Logo. I had previously played with Logo in this class. Logo is a fun program where you can draw shapes with a fun little turtle (or whatever shape you want it to be) and create pictures, and demonstrate mathematical concepts. The first things I did were to create three types of triangles. This is somewhat fun and challenging because it requires that the creator completes some calculation. Unlike squares and rectangles, it is not very easy to create a triangle with "weird" side lengths. After creating a scalene right triangle, a scalene acute triangle, and a scalene obtuse triangle, I created different types of quadrilaterals. This was a lot simpler, although the kite also provided some more challenging computation. I then created some circles and some arcs, which provided an interesting insight into an understanding of circles. The way Logo creates circles is by having the turtle take a plethora of small forward steps at very small angles. It was neat to experiment with how the size of steps and the angles of the steps. I enjoyed this experience. As of this posting, I still have not created my quilt as I had to go home over the weekend and did not have access to my computer. I will update once I do my quilt. It also looks fun, but difficult with all the complex coding involved.

This week in class, we had a guest visitor named Bill Reed, a mathematics teacher from Hamilton Southeastern High School. Mr. Reed and his peers at Hamilton Southeastern seem to use a lot of technology, at least to me; the high school I went to didn't use as much technology as Mr. Reed seems to. One thing that I really enjoyed from Mr. Reed's talk was how much technology is out there for use and how students can really become engaged with it. Mr. Reed mentioned the Powerpoints as an example. According to him, students really enjoy using Powerpoint to demonstrate proofs and pose questions. Students also enjoy compiling and creating their Powerpoints and they also enjoy taking advice on solutions from their classmates and adapting their Powerpoints accordingly. I also really was excited when Mr. Reed mentioned the use of the TI-Nspire in classrooms. It really made me feel that our technology really is used in high school classrooms. For some reason, it's hard for me to imagine some of our technology used in the classroom, but with Mr. Reed's talk I began to see that it truly is used. One thing that Mr. Reed made clear was that technology is expensive and it will not be available at every school that we might teach at. I just wonder how this will be handled in the future, as technology evolves and becomes more and more important.