The Trammel of Archimedes traces an ellipse as the machine’s lever is rotated. Specific measurements of the machine are used to compare the machine’s actions on GeoGebra with the graph of the ellipse and an ellipse formed by the string method.
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Arsalan Wares and David Custer
This pattern-related problem, appropriate for high school students, involves spatial visualization, promotes geometric and algebraic thinking, and relies on a no-cost computer software program.
Marina Goodman
Bridge the digital divide by teaching students a useful technological skill while enhancing mathematics instruction focused on real-life matrix applications.
Amanda L. Cullen, Carrie A. Lawton, Crystal S. Patterson, and Craig J. Cullen
In this lesson, third graders were asked how many degrees is a full rotation around a circle. After we gave students time and space to disagree, to make and test conjectures, and to explore, they reasoned about angle as turn and determined a full rotation is 360 degrees.
Hamilton L. Hardison and Hwa Young Lee
In this article, we discuss funky protractor tasks, which we designed to provide opportunities for students to reason about protractors and angle measure. We address how we have implemented these tasks, as well as how students have engaged with them.
Anne Quinn
The paper discusses technology that can help students master four triangle centers -- circumcenter, incenter, orthocenter, and centroid. The technologies are a collection of web-based apps and dynamic geometry software. Through use of these technologies, multiple examples can be considered, which can lead students to generalizations about triangle centers.
Thomas G. Edwards and Kenneth R. Chelst
In a 1999 article in Mathematics Teacher, we demonstrated how graphing systems of linear inequalities could be motivated using real-world linear programming problems (Edwards and Chelst 1999). At that time, the graphs were drawn by hand, and the corner-point principle was applied to find the optimal solution. However, that approach limits the number of decision variables to two, and problems with only two decision variables are often transparent and inauthentic.
Chris Harrow and Lillian Chin
Exploration, innovation, proof: For students, teachers, and others who are curious, keeping your mind open and ready to investigate unusual or unexpected properties will always lead to learning something new. Technology can further this process, allowing various behaviors to be analyzed that were previously memorized or poorly understood. This article shares the adventure of one such discovery of exploration, innovation, and proof that was uncovered when a teacher tried to find a smoother way to model conic sections using dynamic technology. When an unexpected pattern regarding the locus of an ellipse's or hyperbola's foci emerged, he pitched the problem to a ninth grader as a challenge, resulting in a marvelous adventure for both teacher and student. Beginning with the evolution of the ideas that led to the discovery of the focal locus and ending with the significant student-written proof and conclusion, we hope to inspire further classroom use of technology to enhance student learning and discovery.
Kenneth A. Whaley
Students develop skills as twenty-first century learners and researchers by using Timeglider™ to explore famous mathematicians in a culturally responsive manner.
Martin Griffiths
I always seek activities that might stretch my students yet would be accessible to them; that might require logical thought yet would contain counterintuitive elements; that might provide the opportunity to venture into new mathematical realms yet would have a simple starting point. This article and the activity that inspired it did indeed arise by way of a relatively straightforward problem that I proposed to one of my classes.
