T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips

with Technology

Frank GriffinCate School,

Carpinteria, CA

TCM Conference

Durham, NC 2007

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

• Effectively using technology in the classroom is as much

about involving kids actively and encouraging them to think as it is about pushing buttons

or “bells and whistles”

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

• The pedagogy:• Demonstrate, Check• Make connections

• Numeric, symbolic, graphical• Visualize, see it another way

• Create suspense, surprise• Think, predict, analyze• Play games, have fun

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#10 Starting class: Play “guess the function”

by “hiding” the equations in

Y8, Y9 or Y0

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

• #10

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#9 Testing conjectures: • Student predictions

• Give the kid in the front row the overhead calculator

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#8 Seeing patterns and asking students to guess and

check: • Using the home screen, tables

and the Ask/Ask setting

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#7• Projecting onto a whiteboard

so you can “write” on the graphs; make it like a game

show• Using Horizontal and Vertical

lines in the Draw menu

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#7

• the Draw menu

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#6

• Calling on your students randomly either with numbers

or names entered into a program

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#6

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#5• Using the STO-> key to test hypotheses, use parameters, or

solve to check equations• Enter key to “pause” the graph

• typing over an equation to retrace for “instant replay”

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#4• Showing families of curves

• (multiple graphs): • using a list (L1) as a

coefficient: • y = ax2 + bx + c

• y = L1x2 + bx + c

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#3

• Preparing for class: • Using graph data bases (GDB)

to save functions and save time!

• (in the DRAW menu)

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#2

• Using regular function notation

• Y VARS, e.g Y1(2) or Y1(x+2) to show variations and

transformations

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#2

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

And now the #1 technique!• Animating curves with parametrics and

polar curves;• “replaying” the action in real time (using

a stopwatch)• Use x=T, y=f(T) to animate any function;

• Using SIMUL and • SEQUENTIAL modes

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

#1

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

•This wasn’t David Letterman, but I hope you enjoyed the presentation

and picked up something to enhance your classroom and help your students.

Thanks!

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

SmartviewTI-84 Emulator Software

SmartpadFree “Apps” from TI website

T5: Top Ten Teaching Tips with Technology

• Frank Griffin• Cate School

• Carpinteria, CA

• Frank_Griffin@cate.org