Our local rep gave me a walk-through in March and a copy of the demo to
play with at home. One of the interesting features of the package is how it
integrates math with other disciplines -- art, history, etc. For example,
the ratio and proportion section does a lot with the golden mean, famous
paintings and buildings, etc.
This strategy, of course, is not new to the math curriculum, but has been
used more in a college liberal arts survey course than in an elementary
algebra course that meets only a few hours a week. Is it too time
consuming here?
My experience with regard to teaching CD-ROM-based math courses (two terms)
is that to a considerable extent the message is the medium, that is, the
graphic and sound capabilities are highly motivating to students, and
motivating is half of teaching. I therefore would very much like to
encourage publishing houses to move in the direction of developing (at
great expense, if production values are to be sufficiently high!) a
selection of CD-ROM-based math courses for us to choose from.
Geoffrey Akst, Manhattan CC
akst@chelsea.ios.com
At 8:09 AM 4/16/96, Martha Haehl wrote:
>The Summit Software is not on the market yet. I saw it demonstrated the
>the League for Innovation Conference last fall and they had a copy to look
>at at the AMATYC conference.
>
>At that time, I thought the interface was the best yet, the videos fun and
>informative. I thought it fell short in sticking to the traditional
>integer model. The points plotted in graphing had integer coefficients,
>the scaling was generally even and a "-10 to 10" scale and coefficients of
>problems were generally small integers. The program at that time did not
>seem to take us to a mathematics that we can't do just as well with pencil
>and paper.
>
>The concept of the function machine was good.
>
>Martha
>
>Martha Haehl
>Maple Woods Community College
>2601 N. E. Barry Rd.
>Kansas City, Missouri 64156
>
>(816)437-3147