MAA Prep #2

Our first activity Monday morning was using a sheet of cardstock to make a container with a lid. We were asked to come up with a purpose for the container, measure its volume, and consider issues such as the number of cuts needed and the amount of wasted material.

My partner and I decided we wanted to do something unconventional, and came up with the idea of a pyramid. Here is our finished product. We decided it would be used to store healing herbs and crystals, since we were, after all, in California! The nice thing was that we used the entire sheet of cardstock with no waste.



The rest of the day, and most days to follow, would involve examining activities that could be used to introduce units in a Beginning or Intermediate Algebra course. These have been mainly hands-on activities that have a definite laboratory feel. For example, to look at linearity (and linear equations), the activity involved indirect measurement: "How could you determine how many nails are in a container without counting them?" Thus, we used a scale to measure the weight of one nail, then two nails, and so on to see the linear pattern of increase.

This obviously introduces the idea of slope. The activity introduces the idea of a y-intercept by including the weight of a nail box with the nails. It worked quite well. We then collected forearm length and height data, made a scatterplot, and discussed the idea of a line of best fit.

There have been many interesting activities presented, and they have given me a lot of ideas. The presenters are emphasizing that they do NOT do these activities every class period, rather they use them to DRIVE the curriculum. That is, you do an activity that shows the NEED for a particular mathematical process or function before you teach all of the actual mathematics involved.

I'm not so sure I'm ready to adopt all of their activities, but it seems that some of them could be easily included in my two sections of MTH 095 in the fall.

The other participants have been interesting people with a variety of experience and from several different types of institutions.

Today (Thursday) is a short time, with the afternoon and evening left free for exploring the Bay area. It's a "Spare the Air" day here, since it's a little warmer than usual with lower air quality. That means all public transportation is free, so I'm heading off to BART again to go to SF.

MAA Prep #1

John and I arrived at the Oakland International Airport on Thursday, June 15. The few days before the trip were a little hectic, as I started to experience pretty severe pain in my lower left foot, finally determined to be a problem with my Achilles tendon. A combination of time, a steroid injection, and an oral course of Prednisone would eventually relieve most of the symptoms.

The days from Thursday to Sunday were spent doing tourist-type stuff in the SF Bay area. Here we are at the beach...

John flew back from Oakland to Rockford (via Denver) on Sunday, dropping me off at UC-Berkeley on the way to the airport. After checking in, I walked down the hill to find somewhere to have lunch. The buffet at India Palace caught my attention and was very good. On the way back to the dorm, I considered my options for the afternoon/evening: (1) attend the opening MAA-Prep reception at the university from 4-6, or (2) return to SF and spend time with friends there. I figured that I would be seeing the MAA people all week, so SF won out. This meant I had to return back down the hill to catch the BART. Fortunately, my foot was doing better, as this involved a decent amount of walking.

I returned back to campus early enough to get a good night sleep before starting the actual conference, but the small bed made sleeping not quite as relaxing as usual.