With the iPad, our students (re)discovered the specific terms relating to a circular object. I say (re) because I know that the concept has been taught in previous math years, but some students may have forgotten.
In the past without iPads, students would have viewed a black out line of a circle in their textbook with the words "diameter" and "circumference" labeling the figures accurately.
With iPads, I had students take pictures of real circular objects from our room and label the "diameter" and "circumference" with the Skitch App.
Moving around after about 5 minutes in their seats was a great diversion from the normal class activity. As you can see, students were engaged and active.
With the help of the Skitch App, students are able to connect the math terms with real objects. Bringing a mathematical concept to life. Students posted the labeled pictures to their blogs.
After solidifying the diameter and circumference of many objects, students applied this knowledge to collecting data. Eventually, students will be discovering the relationship between the diameter and circumference of any circular object. Before they do this, we used a Google Spreadsheet Document to gather measurements from real objects.
