Outline


The purpose of this workshop is to give you significant hands-on experience with Geometer's Sketchpad in such a way that you will see directly how such dynamic geometry software promotes greater interest in geometric constructions, facilitates open-ended investigations, generates conjectures and problems, and even inspires proofs. Each day we will start with a brief discussion of some of the techniques available with Sketchpad. After this you will work through a series of exercises that use these tools, along with those you might have learned earlier in the workshop and your own knowledge of geometry. Finally, there will be a set of investigations that you should complete. These will emphasize how Sketchpad facilitates experimentation and discovery. In most of these investigations you will discover results that you have not known before. If you can prove these results, it will be an added bonus. The main goal of the workshop, however, is to show you how to use Sketchpad to make the constructions, model the problems, and make the conjectures.

Lessons

  1. Lesson 1: Sketchpad basics
  2. Lesson 2: Writing scripts
  3. Lesson 3: Tracing and animations
  4. Lesson 4: Putting it all together