Preliminary Research

By: Leslie Howe

Leslie Howe planned to expand the computer lab activities for geometry and the others planned to evaluate the effectiveness of the activities gathering information about student success and also requesting feedback from student from an open-ended written survey.

(Students were not given a list of activities; we wanted to see what they remembered.)

Activities available to geometry teachers
Software created by L. Howe (Howe-Two Software) from previous years:

Traveling Transversals, teaches students terminology related to parallel lines.
Angle Problems, using vertical angles, linear pairs and perpendicular lines.
Name the Parallels, teaches students to identify parallel lines from given information.
Parallel Problems, using angles formed by parallel lines.
Triangle Investigator (triangle inequality theorem & classification)
The Why and How of Congruent Triangles, analyzing given information to do with proof.
Quadrilateral quiz (definitions, true-false, properties)


New Software created this year (Howe-Two Software)
(The five teachers conferred, identifying points of difficulty for students and Leslie wrote programs to address those needs. Because of time constraints not all suggested programs have been written. In some cases teachers did not have opportunity to become familiar with the new programs before their use.)

Definitions, reviews students on initial terms and definitions.
Logic (converse, inverse contrapositive, truth tables, syllogism, detachment)
Mindpower, a logic game
Purloined Parts (overlapping triangles, gathering information for proofs)
Pythagorean Triples and the Pythagorean Theorem
Special Angles (30-60-90; 45-45-90)
Electronic Geoboard
Reflections (in a line or in a point)
Other activities
Mathematica (slicing a cube-demonstration by J. Beckett)
Cabri (introduction and linear pair/vertical angles: a dynamic view)
Cabri (altitude, median, angle bisector, perpendicular bisector, in-circle, circumcircle, centroid, nine-point circle)
Peanut Software (Graphing 3-D), by Rick Parris (freeware)
Internet Exploration beginning at (../../mathlnk.htm)

A Focused Assessment of Geometry and the Math Lab
Evaluating the effectiveness of technology
Summary by Leslie Howe
Farragut High School
Knoxville, Tennessee
1998-1999