Instructors: Will Webber
The world of Polyhedra is huge, yet so many of us know only the most famous examples. Join the adventure as we fold, staple, tape and cut our way through both the famous and not so famous regions of the world of polyhedra
How can you express "six degrees of separation" in mathematical terms? Is Kevin Bacon the center of the Hollywood universe? How many colors does a mapmaker need? Can you schedule all your school's finals in two days? How many ways can you walk around a dodecahedron? All this and much more can be addressed with the accessible and relatively young area of mathematics called graph theory. We'll look at the subject's history and modern applications, using web resources and lots of collaborative work.
Explore the world of data. Collect real data with technology and simulation. Investigate patterns in data and chance. Make those patterns come to life for your students with the help of the calculator and the software Fathom. Data analysis and probability are woven into our everyday lives. The course is designed to strenght the skills of teachers being asked to ready their students for the WASL standard.
Instructors: Michael Naylor and Joyce Frost
Spatial reasoning ability is a strong predictor of success in mathematics. Help your students build and navigate through 2D and 3D mental constructs with a variety of powerful lessons and activities suitable for 5th - 9th graders.
A new version 4.0 of The Geometer's Sketchpad has appeared with new possibilities for authoring and graphing. This software is a powerful tool in any course named "Geometry", but this minicourse will focus how Sketchpad can be used in other math courses as well, including Integrated Math courses. Sketchpad can be used for visualization, experiment, modeling, and dynamic graphing. This course will demonstrate how Sketchpad can be used to study such topics as trigonometry, conics and projectile motion, centers of mass, complex numbers, max-min problems, nets for polyhedra, dynamic graphs linked to models, simulation of physical devices.
The minicourse will highlight the new graphing and tool features in Sketchpad 4.0. This is an Intermediate Sketchpad course; participants will be expected to know basic Sketchpad operations. (If there are questions about the level of Sketchpad knowledge needed and/or how to acquire this knowledge, please inquire of the instructors.)