Case Study: Anne M. Gill, Math Teacher, Alabama

Anne M. Gill teaches math at St. Paul's Episcopal School and has had great success at integrating ExploreLearning's Gizmos into her classroom teaching to the point where she says, "I now do not start a lesson without checking Explorelearning to see what gizmos they have on the topic!"

Let's learn more about how Anne uses the Gizmos in her teaching by asking her a few questions.

What Gizmo did you have the most success (and/or fun and/or satisfaction) teaching with?

Linear Programming – Activity A.

What was it about this Gizmo that made the lesson successful?

When you graph a feasible region by hand, it is not possible to plug in every value to the objective function. The kids do not have the ability to prove the theorem that states the maximum/minimum will occur at the vertices of the feasible region. This [Linear Programming – Activity A] Gizmo allows the students to move the points around to see that the maximum/minimum will occur at the vertices.

Without the Gizmo, students must take this on faith which I do not believe is an effective teaching practice.

How did you use the Gizmo in class? (For example, Did students work individually on computers? In pairs? Did you use the Gizmo as a demo for the whole class? Did you assign the Gizmo as homework?)

The students worked individually on their own computers. I also used my computer and a projector to show the class. Before showing the gizmo, I worked a linear programming problem on the board. When it came time to find the maximum/minimum, I introduced the class to the gizmo. I had the students work through a variation of the exploration guide provided for homework.

[Download Anne's modified Exploration Guide in PDF or Word format]

If you’ve used other technology and/or teaching methods to cover this same math or science concept, did you find the that the Gizmo helped you cover the topic more quickly/easily, less quickly/easily, or about the same? Explain.

I have not used other technology to cover this material. I have taught Linear Programming without the Gizmo, and I have found that students can repeat the process to solve a problem — But [without the Gizmo] they do not understand why it works. The Gizmo helped with understanding.

How did the students respond to the Gizmo?

My students always respond well to the gizmos. I get a lot of "a-ha" moments when using this and other gizmos.

Describe the technology setup in which you used Gizmos. (E.g., Networked classroom? How many computers? Laptops? Cart? Projector? Interactive whiteboard?)

My classroom is on a wireless network. Each student has their own laptop, and I also run the Gizmo on my computer that is connected to a projector.

Thanks for your time and insight, Anne. It's great to hear how you're using the Linear Programming to help students really understand the concept rather than the students just rotely following the method to arrive at the correct answer.

No problem. I now do not start a lesson without checking Explorelearning to see what Gizmos you have on the topic!