Wiseweb and Illuminations Math Applets

Wiseweb can be accessed at http://www.fi.uu.nl/wisweb/en/

I tried a number of the applets on alebra courseware on linearity. There is no documentation or help on how to use these applets. But after playing around with the applet, I was quite impressed with the visualization. Some of the applets do provide some hints, such as Shooting Balls, whose goal is to shoot all the balls in a grid with as few shots as possible. The Algebra tree allows one to create an equation using a graphical format and the final equation or value is shown as output. Students can see how paranthesis is used in the expression. The Tic Tac Go game is a easy game to review mulitplication, addition, and subtraction. Again little documentation is provided. The Fraction Times allows one to understand fraction through visualization how a circle is divided according to the portions of a fraction value. Again minimal documentation is provided and it can take some time to figure out how to use the applet. Overall, the website provides many interesting visualization of basic mathematical concepts. Students need to be given sufficient help to use the website. Otherwise, they will find it frustrating to use.

Illumination can be accessed at http://illuminations.nctm.org/

The Cube Nets activity which requires mental manipulation of folding a 3 dimension cube is interesting. Instructions are clear. There are a number of activities categorized under different grades. The animation is quite good. I tried a Fire lesson for Grade 9-12, which shows how likely a forest fire will spread based on the probablity how much the fire will spread. There are also complete lessons categorized under different grades and topics (such as number and operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, data analysis and probability). Each lesson includes learning objectives, materials, and instructional plan. The website is well suited for teachers to use the material in class.

Paper Review

Finkelstein, N.D., Perkins, K.K., Adams, W., Kohl, P., & Podolefsky, N. (2005). When learning about the real world is better done virtually: A study of substituting computer simulations for laboratory equipment. Physics Education Research,1(1), 1-8.

Findings from this paper show that students made "greater conceptual gains when using computer to prepare for laboratory than those who used the textbook and solved additional problems on the topic." Using simulations that are properly designed , students tend to "mess about" more than using real equipment, and make better use of instructor time which would have otherwise used to fix up the real equipment.

Srinivasan, S., Perez, L. C., Palmer,R., Brooks,D., Wilson,K., & Fowler. D. (2006). Reality versus simulation. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 15 (2), 1-5. Available UBC E-journals.

In this paper, students compared the use of MATLAB (software simulation) and TIMS (hardware system) to create circuits. For novices studens, it is interesting to note that they regard simulations, or anything other than the real system is fake. They did not find that using simulations as "authentic experience". Thus simulations do remove some authenticity in the learning process.