Talk:Better Understanding of Mathematical Concepts through the Graphing Calculator

Instructor comments on your draft units -- Jianwei Zhang 11:28, 27 November 2010 (EST)

Great to see these draft units created. Nice progress. I suggest that you make the following refinements to further improve participants' learning experience and outcome:

1) Better sequencing to engage learners and ease understanding: e.g., use your unit 1 to briefly introduce graphing calculator and its possible benefits, with even an example cited showing/contextualizing its classroom use; your unit 2 for technical operations. This will help better background the content and motivate the participants and make their work on the detailed procedures more meaningful and goal-directed.

2) Create progressive chains within each unit: It is fine and helpful to cite and use external resources such as tutorials. Instead of use the external resources "whole-sale" ("everything is there, go") you may think about ways to break down the topic and referring to corresponding part of the tutorials, and creating an overview summary in your unit for lengthy information you're citing. Doing so will help elaborate and refine the progressive learning path within each unit as well as across all the units and increase interactivity. For example, the 10 items in your unit 1 can be grouped into themes such as operations of documents and other.... each beginning with a summary of what to do with specific tutorial material showing how to do it. Same thing with the unit 3 where you cited several example lessons. You may think about the different types of classroom use these examples convey, summarize and highlight these types before you ask the participants to look at them, and then review/summarize major components/strategies.

Comments from Christine -- Christine Podgorski 13:27, 29 November 2010 (EST)

Hi Jennifer,

Sorry for the delay in responding to your unit. It looks like you have done a lot of research on your topic. I liked the use of the external websites but as Dr. Zhang as also stated, it is a lot of do it on your own. Is your intent so that all teachers of all ability levels will be able to participate? I have limited knowledge of the TI-Inspire but I do feel that the websites you gave would be beneficial. Also, you talk about how to create and develop the lesson, but what about the actual implementation? Are there tips/suggestions a teacher should have before using there lesson? What are common mistakes or problems that teachers run into when implementing the lesson? Great job though, I feel as if this could be very beneficial to a new user! Also, I really like the work sheet you developed in lesson 2.

Christine