It’s done, its finally done… There’s something so satisfactory about seeing your ideas come to life. I remember struggling to formulate my project idea… then struggling to design my idea…. struggling to print the idea and now to see it in reality.
As I walked into a graduate class, my project, fresh off the printer and in hand I was abruptly stopped by a classmate. As she excitedly shifted my project pieces from hand to hand she exclaimed, “This is so cool! Do you know what you can do with this?” As I sat silently, an amused grin on my face, I listened to her explain how this model can be used to derive the area formulas for polygons. She pulled me over to a nearby table and showed me how my printed shapes could be transformed and manipulated so as to derive these formulas. Afraid to trample her excitement and feelings of accomplishment I feigned surprise. In my most grateful voice I thanked her for her innovative ideas and said I would give it some thought. As the professor began class, I couldn’t help the feelings of achievement that washed over me. This will be a great project I thought, everyone can see its benefit…. As I packed up my pieces to focus on the instructions being given a small voice whispered inside… but she is a math major with a mathematical way of thinking.
With that in mind I’ve decided to do 2 different experiments with my project… One will be with freshmen students who have not been introduced to geometry and the other will be with other math teachers who do not teach geometry. Will I be able to replicate the “Aha” moment I witnessed earlier within theses students or will it come as easily to my colleagues. Will they immediately see the usefulness of my project… I am excited to find out…