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Coordinates & Vectors Unit
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"Computers will never take the place of books. You can't stand on a floppy disk to reach a high shelf."--Sam Ewing
The most "sophisticated" technology used in this unit is the graphing calculator (the TI-82 Plus, to be exact). Even that is no certain thing, as I cannot assume that every student has access to a scientific calculator when doing homework. The majority of students use the classroom set of graphing calculators, which do not leave the room, and don't have their own.
Various computer programs, I am sure, could have facilitated aspects of this unit: Geometer's Sketchpad, Mathematica, and Mathlab come to mind. Acquiring access to enough computers and enough legitimate copies of the necessary software, however, would have been a nontrivial task. Videos of hyperspheres, the Mandelbrot set, and other mathematical delights would have whetted the appetites of at least a few students for topics such as hyperspace and fractal dimension.
Alas, it was all I could do simply to produce far more mundane curriculum materials to engage the students, even drawing, where appropriate, from existing activities in the textbook and elsewhere--let alone conduct a comprehensive (and possibly expensive) search for usable "technology" for its own sake. I belong to the category of those people entranced by tech-toys in themselves, but my priorities in designing this unit, given the constraints at hand, were elsewhere. |
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