Technology Review
Shodor
Overview
Shodor is a free online resource for teachers to use in their classrooms with students to help enhance learning. Shodor's mission is to "to improve math and science education through the effective use of modeling and simulation technologies" (Shodor.com, 1994). One way they accomplish this is with interactive applets available to students and teachers.
Critique
Once navigating to the interactive applet page, there are options to search as a student or as a teacher. As a teacher, you can search the resources by standard or by a lesson topic. The activities are aligned to several different states' standards (unfortunately Georgia is not one of them, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards, and the Common Core State Standards. Students can browse the activities by content area (such as algebra, geometry, or statistics) or by grade level. Both student and teacher searches are made simple by a search box at the top of the page.
Each lesson outlines the objectives of the activity, supplies needed, student prerequisites, key terms, an introduction, guiding questions, conclusion, and follow up activities. Each lesson is essentially an outline of how a class could be presented using the activity. In addition to all of the helpful teaching suggestions, each applet has a worksheet to help guide students as they use the applet. Once you navigate to the activity, there are several tabs to assist students: an introduction to the concept, the activity, helpful tips for manipulating the applet, and a page for the instructor.
Many of the activities are great for guided discussions, because of this, the applets may not be useful to individual students needing extra practice. The website is not very attractive to help draw capture a student's attention. The pages are also not very interesting to look at, which may discourage some students. The applets almost appear to use outdated technology. Although the website gives instructions for printing, it is not as simple as I would have hoped. It involves taking a screen shot, pasting into a Word Document, and then printing. There is also not a share feature that would allow students to email their work.
Overall, I found the website to be difficult to navigate and overwhelming. It took me a while to be comfortable finding the same page twice. I would not see my students using this site for enrichment. I also found some of the applets to be lacking in depth. Of the applets that I looked at, I found most of them to be very simple. Students would not be able to make lasting connections with just the materials provided. Teachers may use the materials and applets as a foundation, and with some work may be able to extend the lessons provided to encourage high level thinking.
Each lesson outlines the objectives of the activity, supplies needed, student prerequisites, key terms, an introduction, guiding questions, conclusion, and follow up activities. Each lesson is essentially an outline of how a class could be presented using the activity. In addition to all of the helpful teaching suggestions, each applet has a worksheet to help guide students as they use the applet. Once you navigate to the activity, there are several tabs to assist students: an introduction to the concept, the activity, helpful tips for manipulating the applet, and a page for the instructor.
Many of the activities are great for guided discussions, because of this, the applets may not be useful to individual students needing extra practice. The website is not very attractive to help draw capture a student's attention. The pages are also not very interesting to look at, which may discourage some students. The applets almost appear to use outdated technology. Although the website gives instructions for printing, it is not as simple as I would have hoped. It involves taking a screen shot, pasting into a Word Document, and then printing. There is also not a share feature that would allow students to email their work.
Overall, I found the website to be difficult to navigate and overwhelming. It took me a while to be comfortable finding the same page twice. I would not see my students using this site for enrichment. I also found some of the applets to be lacking in depth. Of the applets that I looked at, I found most of them to be very simple. Students would not be able to make lasting connections with just the materials provided. Teachers may use the materials and applets as a foundation, and with some work may be able to extend the lessons provided to encourage high level thinking.
AppletThis activity is called Sequencer. This applet is suggested as use for an introduction to arithmetic and geometric sequences. With the applet, you can vary the starting number of the sequence, manipulate the multiplier (or common ratio) and the add-on (or common difference), as well as the number of values in the sequence. After selecting these four values and clicking "Calculate Sequence!" the values of the sequence are plotted on a graph and calculated below.
I like that this applet plots the points, rather than just generating a sequence. I would like to be able to change the view of the graph, but I do not think this is an option. One of the CCGPS Coordinate Algebra standards outlines that students should be able to make connections from geometric sequences to exponential functions and from arithmetic sequences to linear functions. By plotting the points, students should recognize the graphs of these various functions. Although I like the graph, the focus of this applet was to introduce a sequence, yet the values of the sequence are small and not prominent on the display. The "Sequencer Exploration Questions" worksheet provided by Shodor.com encourages students to explore the effects of positive and negative numbers, and of integer and non-integer numbers. Many students often only consider positive integers, and this would help them remember to explore various other options. This worksheet would serve the purpose of introducing various sequences to students. However, because there are no instructions to just manipulate the multiplier while leaving the add-on at zero, or manipulate the add-on while leaving the multiplier at one, I feel that this introduces sequences, but not specifically arithmetic and geometric sequences. |
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Activity
Link to activity using Sequencer applet: Activity
Sources
Georgia Department of Education. (2012, May). GeorgiaStandards.org. Retrieved May 2015, from Mathematics Georgia Standards of Excellence (GSE) 9-12: https://www.georgiastandards.org/Common-Core/Pages/Math-9-12.aspx
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. (1997). Interactive. Retrieved May 2015, from Sequencer: http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Sequencer/
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. (1997). Interactive. Retrieved May 2015, from Sequencer: http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Sequencer/