Day 8 The eight group members (two of the groups combined) crowded the doorway, six women in the front, two men in the back. The women were wearing paper signs that said "tree" and holding hammers. The men were wearing hardhats. They sang a tune that was something like, "G - om - e - tree," at which point the women lifted their papers to reveal the word 'tree' written on them. I cannot do justice to their performance, so I won't.
Their project was entitled "Geometry Under Construction." They created a home page for geometry teachers. They decided on this for their project because they realized the need for a community on the web for math educators. When searching for links for their page, they noticed how often the sites one finds via Veronica are really empty or useless. This gave them further impetus for creating a home page.
They also learned a few other things in the process of creating their page. They realized the vast resources of the Internet, but they also realized that you sometimes have to use different Net tools to find what you are looking for. In addition, they decided on the title, "Geometry Under Construction" because the focus of their page was more on the quality of material than on the structure of the page. To keep with the under construction theme, they included an e-mail address at the bottom of the page (GUC@forum.swarthmore.edu) for people to send suggestions to for alterations of the page. Here is a brief outline of their page with a few highlights:
URL: http://forum.swarthmore.edu/sum94/geometry.project2.html
The second group also created a very useful home page for teachers. They did not introduce their page with as much fanfare as the first, but their page had a very nice construction and many useful sites. Their page is entitled "Authentic Assessment." Some of the additional features on their page are listings of how large the documents are, beautiful colored lines to separate sections, and a convenient link to the pages I have created for the Summer Institute. Below is a brief outline of their page.
Authentic Assessment in Mathematics
This page begins with a brief introduction to the Summer Institute and an abstract that explains their mission and lists the group members' names. Next comes a table of contents that links to the main sections of the page.
URL: http://forum.swarthmore.edu/sum94/project2.html
In conclusion, I would just like to say that I had a great time this week, and I enjoyed meeting so many interesting people. It is very encouraging to see a group of teachers with so much energy and vitality. We hear so much about how our schools are failing and about the supposed bad quality of teachers. This group definitely establishes hope for the future. Also, we saw how bringing twelve educators (who are excellent on their own) together can make such great things happen. By connecting more teachers and schools via the Internet, the possibilities of the fruits of their collaboration are even more exciting.
I've enjoyed reporting -- Out of correspondence -- Heather Mateyak