Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Apparently, this is how to teach my kids vector equations of lines

Vector equations of lines usually hit my students like a nasty shock, after weeks of soft and cushy work with vector operations. This year, I tried a constructive approach, using this silly and in my opinion boring and too structured investigation:



The plan was that students should use this geogebra activity together with the written instructions. That immediately failed, since school computers did not have updated geogebra. So they used mini-whiteboards instead, and it worked well. And when I say it worked well, I mean it worked amazing. I have no idea why, because seriously that investigation isn't exactly a masterpiece of pedagogy, but this group of students caught on to both the activity and the conclusions. Above all, even the weakest students in class could arrive at, explain and use vector equations of lines.

1 comment:

  1. Check out Saraswati Amma's book, "Geometry in Ancient Medieval India." It includes calculus and trigonometry. It is absolutely amazing. I still have not understood the example on how they figured out the infinite series for sine and cosine.

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