From: Daniel Scher <dscher@kcptech.com>
Subject: Re: E-book lesson powered by Web Sketchpad
Date: June 29, 2015 at 4:08:35 PM EDT
To: Scott Steketee <stek@geometricfunctions.org>

Hi Scott,

This is really nice. It comes about as close as I’ve seen to genuinely integrating WSP into a standard textbook lesson.

I wonder, though, about the tools in the first sketch. The height tool, for example, assumes that the student will know to drag the glowing point to the horizontal base and match the unit to the existing unit. (Actually, can the unit be an assumed given, allowing you to hide the calculation entirely? Ditto with radius?). The distance traveled tool has the same issue. I’d say that both tools are less about constructing mathematics and more about dealing with the complexities of matching givens. Even the plot as (x, y) tool feels somewhat less pedagogical than I’d like since the d and h are labeled for students. (Although this could be considered a warm-up to the model that follows). 

I also noticed that the text “Press Activate Rotation Distance…” appears with only the first line showing. 

By comparison, the tools for the second sketch feel more organic, easier to use, and more mathematical to me.

In the second sketch, for some reason, the message “tracing is on” doesn’t appear, even though the tracing does. I might mention to students that they should turn on tracing.

-Daniel

On Jun 29, 2015, at 3:37 PM, Scott Steketee <stek@geometricfunctions.org> wrote:
Hi Folks,

In the aftermath of our rush last week to present the webinar, I made some time to refine the sample e-book lesson. I encourage everyone on this list to take a moment to look at the revised page, which gives a much better sense of just how valuable Web Sketchpad can be when it's used to power an e-book math lesson:

http://geometricfunctions.org/wsp/july2015/ferris-wheel/

Here's a short list of the changes:
	•	Production quality is much higher; it now looks almost like a real e-book lesson.
	•	I wrote a real introduction to orient students to the lesson.
	•	I added an introductory picture of the very first Ferris wheel.
	•	I added a small simple sketch as a transition from the physical wheel pictured in the photo to the model students will work with.
	•	Each of the three interactive figures is better customized to its stage in the lesson.
	•	The tools in the sketches work more cleanly, partly as a result of bug-fixing by the development team (Thanks, Lyn!)
	•	I've added "Check Yourself" sections to show examples of the sorts of questions students should try to answer as they manipulate the web sketches.
I don't by any means consider this a polished lesson yet, nor have I tested it with students. But it will give you a much clearer picture of what such a lesson might look like, and how powerful Web Sketchpad can be in enabling students' direct interaction with, and even creation of, the math they are studying.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

--Scott

Scott Steketee  |  215.606.7787

stek@geometricfunctions.org

Knowledge ... has a genesis and a movement which make transmission simply impossible. The problem with pedagogical methods based on the idea of transmission of knowledge is not that they are inefficient. Rather, they are wrong. —Luis Radford (2009), "Interpreting motion graphs, and the question of space, place, and distance", ZDM

For more info on geometric functions, go to geometricfunctions.org

My 2015 NCTM presentation on geometric transformations and linear functions is at geometricfunctions.org/nctm2015

My Sine of the Times blog posts are at blog.keycurriculum.com

The Geometer's Sketchpad is available at www.keycurriculum.com