Geometry, Asus, and Flickr

Having ten eee pcs in my classroom turned out to be handy this week.

Each of the computers I have has a webcam on it. Not the highest resolution, but for web work, they are fine. The math unit I am working on in class is about geometry: angles, lines, shapes etc. Combine ten small cameras with nice weather and it is a recipe for heading outside!

Stealing a page from  Darren Kuropatwa and Chris Harbeck's books, I took my students out onto the playground with their ten pcs. They took a bunch of simple pictures. Coming back inside, they had to choose four of them, upload them to flickr and write about five geometry concepts shown in their picture.

Amazing how simple it was with the webcams on these laptops. No having to hook cameras to computers and hope all of the software works. Even with the small harddrive these machines have, most of the groups took several dozen pictures initially before getting down to the final four they wanted to work with.

Overall, this project took only two 80 minute classes, a huge drop in time from when we had to print out pictures or even hook cameras to computers. With the built in webcams, there was no paper created and it was easy to take the pictures, edit, upload and then write.

Tags: Asus, eee pc, Darren Kuropatwa, Chris Harbeck, math, geometry, photos

Comments

[tgidinski]

What a great idea! This is so much more meaningful for students than looking at a picture in a text book.

I've taken my students on a walking field trip before to view a local construction site for a geometry lesson (although the construction workers looked at us all peering through the fence very oddly); this would be an excellent extension for that!