I’ve been touting the virtues of ClassPad.net, Casio’s free online math tool for ages (just explore our ClassPad.net Youtube channel, and you will see!). If you have not explored ClassPad.net, now’s the time, because it has grown and improved so much, with built-in emulators, drawing tools, number lines, notes, ability to save your creations, and so much more I can’t even put it all down. Hopefully, if you attended the annual NCTM Convention in Chicago this past September, you were able to stop by the Casio booth and explore ClassPad.net and play with some of the hand-held calculators and are already excited about the possibilities for your students.
My most favorite thing about ClassPad.net, which has not changed and only gotten better, is the multiple representations you can provide in one space. As a math educator, helping students make connections and build their own understanding is so important. As we all know, being able to see and manipulate and connect a math concept in multiple ways (table, graph, equation, words) fosters conceptual understanding, which helps develop and strengthen procedural skills and fluency, allowing students to apply their learning to new situations and real-world context.
What I want to do in the next several posts is show you this ability to use multiple representations and dynamic exploration/manipulations with a tool like ClassPad.net, to demonstrate how your own students can develop that conceptual understanding. I plan to focus on specific math concepts as a way to show you the tool and to stress the importance of providing students with the ability to explore and manipulate using multiple representations to make sense of mathematics. I will be incorporating some of the built-in calculator emulators that are part of the ClassPad.net environment as well, to share the versatility of the tool.
For this post, much like I did with my previous posts on quadratic functions and shifts, I wanted to explore exponential functions and graphs. If students already have an understanding of linear and quadratic shifts to a parent function, then the connection to exponential functions becomes an easy lift. I am going to use the fx-991CW scientific calculator to start off with, using the ClassPad.net emulator, but more importantly to emphasize that if you have this hand-held calculator, you have quick and easy access to ClassPad.net right from the QR code on the calculator. A win-win!
I also wanted to share some resources from our Casio Essentials that specifically focus on exponential functions and the fx-991CW, to use with your students for those of you looking for some additional support and lessons.
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