Fresh Look Fridays - Interactive Geometry: 3D

Fresh Look Fridays - Interactive Geometry: 3D - (22-01-2010)

Author: Vanessa Cassie

Before I get into this week's review of an interactive website, I just want to take a few minutes to thank everyone for their hospitality this past week. I spent the last 4 days in Ontario, conducting SMART Board workshops for teachers and division office staff with both the District School Board of Niagara and the Durham Catholic District School Board. The participants in each session were enthusiastic, fun and obviously very knowledgeable, which always makes for fantastic workshops! Thank you!

My Fresh Look Friday website today comes at the suggestion of one of this past week's participants -- Lynn Jeffs with DCDSB. MathsNet Interactive Geometry: 3D is a fantastic interactive website for junior high - high school math students.

This website provides challenges where students have to replicate specific 2D images on a 3D platform. For the spatially challenged, such as myself, this is not as simple of a task as it first seems! I particularly love this site because it easily lends itself to small-group collaboration, trial and error discussions and problem solving -- all skills for our 21st century learners. Put it on the SMART Board, and work through together as a class, or make the SMART Board a 'center' with this one Geometry activity for one group of 3-5 students to tackle, while other small groups work on additional geometry challenges around the room (traditional pen and paper Math problems, building 3D models, etc.)

Thanks, Lynn for sharing a fantastic website that works extremely well in classrooms with IWBs!

As always, here are the curricular outcomes for Alberta that this site helps meet: