Today’s opener turned into much, much more than I originally expected – and a truly powerful share at the end.
For the last few days, my students have been working through the binomial theorem, expanding and finding specific terms. There has been much movement around class, with students at the board, working together, sharing ideas. I provide problems off the top of my head, giving more difficult ones if the students seem ready, and peeling back if we need more practice. To provide solutions, I use WolframAlpha to expand the binomial and project solutions from my iPad. This has worked well, but students have also taken note of the deeper info Wolfram provides in these calculations. In today’s opener, one of these interesting graphs appeared on screen as students enetered:
The Wolfram player allowed students to move around this strange object and explore it from all angles. One of my classes impressed me by relating what they related the picture to the Continental Shelf, which they were exploring in science. I provided a 2-minute intro to the (x,y,z) plane – always a fun time.
It was then that one of my students who participates in robotics shared his experience with a 3D printer this summer. I was surprised that few students had heard of these devices, and they seemed intrigued by the idea. I was reminded of a powerful video involving a student their age, whose father “printed” a prosthetic hand for his son. The end of class then featured two videos I dug up and shared in the last few minutes of class to make students aware of the engineering possibilities.
3D Yoda:
Inspiring story of 3D printing in action:
When the kids leave with a “wow” moment, something has gone right!
Tomorrow morning, 120 8th graders will meet with me in the auditorium to learn their fate. I have split the kids into 26 groups of 4 or 5 and gathered supplies for a popsicle-stick bridge-building contest. The concept and many guidelines came from the site 
The supplies are simple: each group will receive 200 popsicle sticks, a glue gun, and glue sticks. Teams will only receive the glue gun after they have drawn some sketches and discussed a plan for their design. Most of today was spent organizing 26 boxes of sticks, and getting groups ready. Groups will be graded on their design, how much load their bridge will hold, and how well they work together as a team. And about those groups….all groups have a similar mix of “advanced” kids and “pre-algebra” kids, which I have assigned beforehand. This mix led to the “genius or idiot” comment above from a colleague. Yep, this could go badly. But, it could go great! Its too tempting to not try!
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