Spreadsheets

I watched the tutorial entitled: "Do Larger Pumpkins Have More Seeds?", by Mr. Patrick Oliver. I really liked this tutorial. When I was watching it at first i thought it was going to be rather boring. Once i started watching it, it pulled me in and i liked it. This project incorporated many different things into it like: learning to use spreadsheets, mathematics, he was even talking about the writing that he has had them doing. The students were asked to guess the weight and amount of seeds that were in each one. The students were split up into groups, after they made their predictions, they were asked to weigh the pumpkins and pull out the seeds and count them. Once they were done with this, they then took their data and inserted it into the interactive learning spreadsheet that the teacher made. In the end they were able to view their predictions vs. the actual amount in a bar graph. I thought this was very cool. not only does using the spreadsheet and using the bar graph put things into prospective for the student, it is a new and interesting way to learn.

There are several ways that i could incorporate this into my geometry class. In using the pumpkins we could make it so that they would have to predict the diameter. Then using the formula the student would find the real diameter of a circle. we could then insert it into the spread sheet so they could see their differences. When working with geometry there are many different things that can be done. If we were looking at trying to do angles. we could bring in a pool table and use that. then plug the different angles into a spreadsheet to show the differences (acute, obtuse...ect). I really like this way of teaching. Not only does it bring technology into the classroom but it also allows the student a different and more fun way of learning.