This collection of JAVA applets is produced by a team from four Israeli educational organizations. It provides a rich interactive exploratory environment to investigate linear and quadratic functions that includes linked active windows, application tasks, exercises and sample writing assignments.
Type of Material:
To encourage the user to visually explore relationships in linear and quadratic functions.
Recommended Uses:
Classroom demonstration; student exploration and enrichment.
Technical Requirements:
Java Virtual Machine (download available from site main page)
Identify Major Learning Goals:
To encourage the user to visually explore relationships in linear and quadratic functions.
Target Student Population:
K-12 and college students.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Basic knowledge of algebra, functions and graphs
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The site explores linear and quadratic functions. From the main page it branches to six topics in linear functions and ten topics in quadratic functions. Linear topics include, for example, representations of linear functions, rate of change, transformations and functions on intervals. Quadratic topics include, for example, products of linear functions, comparisons and operations, solving equations, and three applications: economic decisions, motion at changing speeds, and graphic design. The site also includes help pages which can be organized by activity (6 linear and 10 quadratic), tool (10 general, 9 linear and 26 quadratic), or as an alpha index.
Concerns:
none
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
Pages can be accessed from a variety of routes, encouraging exploration. Activities help includes the name and a brief description; tools help includes a picture of the applet window and a description of what it does. Each topic includes 5 to 10 activity tasks and several exercises. Several topics include attractive suggestions for writing activities. The applets clearly encourage exploration: for example the representation of linear functions topic provides four different views (function formula, graph, table of values, and computing machine) where the effect of changing values can be examined interactively. The tasks associated with each topic give an attractive variety of simple applications such as total cost of fuel at a gas station, comparison of fare structures for three cab companies, and a nice visualization of the rectangular fence area problem (Rabbit Cage).
Concerns:
Students could spend a lot of time here (which, of course, could be good) but to structure a specific educational goal would require additional instructor guidance.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The operation of the applets is unusually trouble free and truly provides for individual exploration of the topics.
Concerns:
Instructions for what to expect after youve clicked to activate an applet window are not always clear or intuitive. There are some strange spellings in this English language version, such as sandwitches (larger parent site is mainly in Hebrew). Navigation back to home page is difficult from some locations (mainly help lists).
Creative Commons:
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