The model teacher (author Sinclair) was enhanced in the sense of having expertise and a technical skill set beyond any to be reasonably expected from most teachers. Consequently, she was able to cope with problems, setbacks and other challenges in the classroom which would have made progress impossible otherwise. In addition, direct technical support was provided to handle critical problems encountered during the resource development. Initially, PDG members Trevor Bradley and Terrance Yu developed the OpenMath JavaBeans and worked directly with the teacher; Paul Irvine assisted with the PC network and software installation. In later stages, Carlton Chan provided the JavaBeans support with additional PC support from Angus McIntosh of Redesign. In this fashion, the lack of on-line help, stability in the software, supporting resources and facilitating environment was compensated for.
A series of lesson plans were developed to teach a specific set of mathematics concepts, in this case transformations (e.g. translation, rotation, and reflection). These geometric concepts were chosen in particular to take advantage of the visual and interactive strengths of the technology. The lesson plans were centered around a collection of applets developed by the model teacher. Each applet was developed as needed, as if by a teacher who was doing weekly planning for each subsequent set of lessons.
The lessons were constructed around the progression of exploration, application and problem-solving. This progression was intended first to give students an intuitive understanding of each transformation, then to guide them into abstracting their properties, and finally to allow them to use their skills in a problem-solving situation. For example:
Solve the following:
For a typical stage in the plan, one or two applets were needed in addition to supporting content. This included both directions on how to use the applets and a sequence of activites to be completed using the given applet. The students also had the chance to look at a set of questions that they would be answering off-line following their sessions. For the lesson above, the student's learning interface appears in Figure 3. The applet used appears in Figure 4. Figure 5 shows the underlying JavaBean schematic for the applet as it was constructed by the teacher.
In practice, the twenty four students were assigned to three groups of eight students, rotating between using the four workstations in pairs and two other related non-computational activities. Each pair of students negotiated their roles at the keyboard and mouse, exploring the lesson cooperatively. They followed the provided text with additional guidance and instruction from the teacher. In general, the teacher managed the attention of all twenty four students and thus provided limited support to the computer users.
