Definition of a Cone

Andrew posted a question on his blog about the definition of a cone.  See if you can help him out at http://wildcatluvr.blogspot.com

Okay, so who needs an idea for a Master's Project? I am reading a book tonight about building scale model houses to support the learning of surface area, nets, and 3-D shapes. The models are made with constuction paper and my personal favorite is the one that has stilts and is sitting on a beach, over the water. Needless to say you would have to be about 3 inches tall to live there but it does look nice. I LOVE miniature things.
I taught an intro to Logo lesson in my 5 pm class tonight as they had to learn the "Rule of 360." I challenged them to draw equilateral polygons starting with a triangle, sqare and then the pentagon and up. I had one darling say to me "just tell us how to do it" and you know the rest...
Have a great weekend and see you Monday.

Animation Tours

I noticed that a few of you commented, either on your blog or in your PGP, that you wanted to look at animation in GSP so I have uploaded two animation files from the Middle School materials from Key.  There are four animation "tours" in the pdf file and the companion gsp file is there as well.  They do a pretty good job of walking you through the steps of how to animate and how to create buttons.

Hey - another fun class!
I would like for everyone to read the Slavit article.

"Suggested" homework is to 

1)  Complete the always/sometimes/never charts in Chapter Five of the Shafer text that was handed out tonight. Complete a few (not all!) activites from Exploring Geometry with Geometer's Sketchpad CHAPTER FOUR on quadrilaterals; OR

2) Complete the Logo Set #2 on the last two pages in Chapter Five of the Shafer text. This will help with a future Logo project.

Here are your blog/journal questions for this week:

1. Reaction to the Slavit article.

2. When is your spring break and do you get to go somewhere fun?  No need to elaborate, I just want to know when folks will be gone.

Thank you all for working so hard!

Class on Monday

I am very excited about our class tomorrow.  Our hands-on activity will use spaghetti as we create different quadrilaterals.  Please note that I am going to begin encouraging you to sit with folks who have similar interests as to what they want to pursue for their master's project.  For instance, there is a group that wants to create a LOGO curriculum, so they will be sitting together.  I have noticed a few folks who want to learn more advanced features of GSP (like animation) so they need to find each other.  I am also detecting a few that want to look at the concept of proof and how to teach proof in the middle school.  I will bring a number of resource books down to our classroom, so you can see what is out there and generate more ideas.

Master's Project - Algebra

A. O. indicated in her blog that she would like to learn more about Sketchpad and how to use this with algebra.  This is a great idea and one that would be approved.  There are algebraic concepts that she has explored (like slope) but one down side is that slopes are measured in decimals.  Or is that a down side?  GeoGebra will measure the slope (and illustrate it) as a ratio of the sides of a right triangle (which is how I teach slope).  So my point is that just because this is a geometry course, algebra on GSP would be a worthwhile project.