![]() ![]() When given a choice, students have a vested interest in what they do. I believe that it is due to giving them a choice of what they want for their design. Below this post is a small collection of student work (mostly from PreAlgebra and Algebra 2 students). Once finished, I’ve allowed them to take a “screenshot” of the picture or export the picture to Microsoft Paint (or a similar program) so they can embellish it (add color, fine details, etc.). They will then go to Desmos to enter their equations and hopefully recreate their designs. This is the main purpose of the project: to be able to find the equations given coordinates on a graph. To find the equations they can use the coordinates of the points on the lines. The students will then “break up” the picture into a collection of smaller lines (curves, straight lines, circles, ellipses, etc.) which they can find the equations of. I then print out a copy for the students. ![]() I make the design transparent enough to see the coordinate system in the background in addition to centering it. An excellent program available for free to use is called Desmos (another good program is Graphmatica). Once I receive the pictures I overlay it (using a program like SMART Notebook or Adobe) on top of a picture of the coordinate system they will be working with online. For an extremely low level class you can even have them only work with straight lines. For example, you can have them have at least 2 trigonometric functions, at least one constant function, at least one parabolic function, etc. You can set your expectations depending on the level of the class. One thing to note is that the students should be given a rubric (as with most if not all assignments). Once each group has chosen their ideas they are asked to go online, download a picture of that idea and e-mail it to me. Depending on the type of class I would either throw out the ideas that I know would be extremely difficult (if they are a lower level class) or the ideas that are too easy (if they are a higher level class). I go around to each pair and go over their lists. For example, if one of them is a big comic book collector then a symbol (Batman, X-Men, etc.) would be a good idea. I group the class into pairs and then ask them to brainstorm design ideas (8-10 of them) based on things that they have a genuine interest in. I’ve used it in my PreAlgebra classes as well as my PreCalculus classes. I like this project so much because it’s so versatile. One of my favorite projects that I typically assign is the “Graphic Design” or “Recipe Function” Project. Aristotle once said, “Anything that we have to learn how to do we learn by the actual doing of it.” If students learn best by “doing” then we should be encouraging them to become more of an active learner than a passive learner. In my classes I try to incorporate as many projects as possible. ![]()
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