The two websites which I found to interesting, as well as very useful were the Math Forum, and National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. The first, provided many different online assignments which I found to be particularly useful for my Statistics and Probability class. Upon searching through the assignments, I found an internet workshop that I could utilize in my classroom as a project. In the project, students will be exploring and creating theories of their own in relation to the data (Mathforum, 2004). Then they will explore their theories to see if they can find any correlation between the data distribution and that of their theory. They will be given the chance to re-evaluate their theories and even create new ones, based on this exploration. Being a statistics class, this is a key skill that students should learn how to utilize.
The second website, the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives, was a website that I found to also have materials pertaining to my Statistics and Probability class. The assimilations I found here were geared more towards the Probability aspect of the class though. It it, I found one particular assimilation that goes along perfectly with my Unit Plan for Probability. I introduced the Monty Hall Problem as a thinking exercise to start off the unit, and on this website I found an assimilation of the same problem(National Library of Virtual Manipulatives, 2010). Thus, I would use this assimilation as a class experiment to test the theory. One half of the class would simply pick a door at random, while theother half would pick a door at random and then change their answer. As a class we would compare our results after 20 or so trials to see if putting theory to practice yielded higher probability chances in the Monty Hall Problem.
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives(2010). Lets make a deal: Stick or Switch. Retrieved on 6-29-11 from http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/topic_t_5.html
Mathforum (2004). How to use Census data on E-STAT with Fathom for a data analysis project. Retrieved on 6-29-11 from http://www.keypress.com/documents/fathom/Activities/EducationalAttainmentAndIncome/IncomeEdStatCanada.pdf
Your assimilation activity with the Virtual Manipulatives web site sounds great! That web site would be great for use on a SMART Board!
ReplyDeleteThe Virtual Manipulatives web link that you provided did not seem to work. I do not believe that is correct. Also is the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives the organization that created that web site? You may need to fix your references to reflect the correct organization/author name.