Teams of middle school and high school mathematics teachers, and one of their students, were selected from registrants to participate in a multidisciplinary two-day workshop, funded by the Boeing Company, for an opportunity to solve real world scientific problems based on data collected from scientific experiments. This workshop took place on the Tri-Cities Washington State University campus in April 2006. Participants were divided into teams comprised of one middle or high school mathematics teacher, one of their students, and a WSU student currently taking a math methods class. This unique approach of teachers collaborating with one of their middle or high school students and a future teacher allowed the in-service teacher and pre-service teacher the opportunity to learn from students and assess the outcomes on learning from the implementation of discovery based learning activities, as well as allowed for future teachers to learn from experienced teacher's expertise.
The two-day workshop involved two different types of scientific experiments. The goals of day one were to reinforce knowledge of arithmetic and algebra and introduce the concepts: growing degree days and heat degree days. The goals of day two were to introduce or reinforce the use of transformations in graphing functions or curves and study the connections between physics and a mathematical model for the path made by various types of bouncing balls. Both activities involved the gathering of quantitative data to assess real world information, then used technology to: manage, analyze, and interpret the data; find a best fit curve; and make predictions based on the analysis of the quantitative information.
Photos from the two-day workshop are displayed below.
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