I am designing a webquest for remedial Algebra 1 students to review working with positive and negative integers, decimals, and fractions. Since I don't (yet) know javascript or php script or flash, it won't be real fancy. It will have one page with instructions, pictures, and links, and a separate page with text boxes where students can input their answers, and at the end, they can print the page and turn it in to be graded. The theme I have in mind is that of altitude and depth. I will include links about various high places and low places, not just mountains and valleys, but applications to high diving, spelunking, skydiving, and scuba diving, just to name a few, as excuses to have kids perform basic operations with positive and negative numbers. Here are a few ideas I already have:
Use the internet (I'll probably provide a link, to avoid ambiguity) to find the highest altitude on earth and to find the lowest altitude that is not under water, and subtract to find the difference.
Provide a link to a page explaining what the bends are. Have the students search for the depth at which this becomes an issue, and the rate at which a submersible going lower than that depth must ascend, and divide to find how long it would take to make such an ascent.
Have the students find the rate of acceleration due to gravity (ignoring wind resistance), and then, given an initial velocity and a duration of freefall, find the terminal velocity.
Have the students find the altitude of the highest point on Mars and the highest point on Earth, and divide to find how many times higher the altitude on Mars is.
I could keep coming up with stuff, but I want to avoid any creative ruts, so I figured having other people make suggestions of ways to end up adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing negative numbers with positive numbers would give me a greater diversity.
So . . . any ideas?
(You don't need to come up with links . . . I can do that part of my own homework. )
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Have the students search for the depth at which this becomes an issue, and the rate at which a submersible going lower than that depth must ascend, and divide to find how long it would take to make such an ascent.
I would be concerned about things like this, since those numbers are always going to be variables about which various sites may well disagree.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
How about something with hot air balloons? How much heat is needed to heat the volume of air in the balloon enough to lift the weight of the basket, for instance.
Posted by breyerchic04 (Member # 6423) on :
You do webquests in math class? I have so much to learn. Actually Icky, I may email you with my interview questions for my Ed class, if I can't get ahold of my sixth grade teacher. We have to interview a male teacher about how they run their classroom (a female one too, but I did my mom).
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
And Tom, that's why Joe would provide one site for them to use. Rather than a submersible I'd just use scuba diving, so you could link them to PADI or NUMI information, it's going to be pretty standardiszed.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
With altitude, you could also include something about the different amount of time it takes to boil an egg at different altitudes, and then have them calculate how long it would take at the highest and lowest altitudes they found.
I have no idea what sort of level remedial algebra I actually is, so I don't know if these suggestions are too hard or too easy. So I'm going to just keep making them and figure you can adapt them to your needs. Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Have the students search for the depth at which this becomes an issue, and the rate at which a submersible going lower than that depth must ascend, and divide to find how long it would take to make such an ascent.
I would be concerned about things like this, since those numbers are always going to be variables about which various sites may well disagree.
*nod*
quote: (I'll probably provide a link, to avoid ambiguity)
What I'll do is find one particular site's simplistic answer and send them to to that site . . . unless it's so variable that I can't even get one site to give me a straightforward answer.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
<--- slow typist
quote:So I'm going to just keep making them and figure you can adapt them to your needs.
That would be perfect.
To give you more of a sense . . . I want tasks that will force them to perform calculations with negative numbers. (It could be one negative or both negative.) Many of the numbers could be integers, but ideally at least some of them would be decimals or fractions.
I think the boiling idea is an awesome one, because it involves just the sort of fact of life that these kids are not likely to know, but I'm not sure I can see a way to tie negative numbers into it.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
I would do temperature differences, too, between different parts of the world. I.e., hottest recorded temperature anywhere on Earth and the coldest (with or without windchill) and the difference between them. You could also require they convert these temps and diffs from F to C or vice versa. I knew enough engineering students that had problems with that that it'd probably be a good thing to work on.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
It ended up being fancier than I thought it would be . . . but then, it ended up taking *much* longer to create than I thought it would, too. *sigh* Oh well, a learning curve for me as well, and at least it's more or less done now.
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