For this assignment I read through Holly, Stephen, and Matt's lesson plan about linear functions. The purpose of their lesson was to get students to understand how to graph linear functions. The unique part about their lesson plan is that it incorporated a tablet/web application called Geogebra. I had never heard of this app before reading through their lesson so I decided to do a little research of my own (this could also be procrastination). Geogebra is easy to use and helps students understand different geometric and algebraic functions. I think using this app could be helpful because it provides kids with a different kind of visual representation of the function and also allows them to be hands on in the sense that students are in charge of operating the app.
In terms of their pedagogical approach, I appreciate the fact that they wanted the students to prove their work before they graph their line or find the equation on the app. It is too easy for students to just plug in numbers on an app and that is definitely something that I fear when bringing technology into the classroom. Forcing the students to show their work and explain what they did is very important, especially in this lesson.
Since all three members of this group will teach different content areas, I appreciated how they talked about how the lesson structure would transfer to different content areas including history and english. Although I don't know of any apps that would necessarily work in my content area, I would be willing to experiment with them if they did exist. I want to hear what other people think about the idea of incorporating apps in the classroom in their content areas. Does anyone think this could work outside of math?
Hearing history people like you get excited about graphing apps definitely make me smile! I have also never heard of that app, but it sounds like a great thing to bring into the classroom. In my organic lab, we had to do distillations for over 3 hours to then find out at the end of the semester there is this magical machine that does it for you in minutes. Having students work for the easier ways is also very important to me. I don't think students will see the value of the easier way until they go through the harder parts. As for other apps, I know of an app where students can build atoms by throwing sub-atomic particles out in the plane with there finger!! I was super jazzed when I added too many neutrons and it started to shake because it wasn't stable anymore. I apologize if this is too sciency for you..!
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