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. In this fashion, the lack of on-line help, stability in the software, supporting resources and facilitating environment was compensated for.
The specific topic of transformations was chosen in particular to take advantage of the visual and interactive strengths of the technology; tranformations are typically awkward for students to explore using pencil and paper. Students can often predict the result of a transformation but have more difficulty in identifying the single transformation that connects a shape with its image. Also, transformations is a potentially rich and engaging subject which can be extended to more advanced topics such as tesselations and wallpaper patterns. It was hoped that by having a dynamic environment, students could investigate these areas and gain a deeper appreciation for the fundamental concepts involved, such as isometry and congruence.
The applets themselves were constructed to satisfy a range of pedagogical goals; some were purely exploratory (explore reflecting shapes across the x-axis), some were geared toward applying a specific concept (use reflection to create a given compound shape) and others allowed students to investigate a particular problem (what are the effects of reflection on the coordinates of the shape?).
On average, the students had time to use three applets per session. They were given a set of questions to answer after each session. The purpose of the questions was threefold: to support their on-line learning, to gauge whether they were grasping the concepts explored during the session and to see whether they were able to transfer their on-line learning to the more traditional pencil and paper environment. A student's typical learning interface appears in Figure 3. The applet used appears isolated in Figure 4. Figure 5 shows the underlying JavaBean schematic for the applet as it might be constructed in JavaStudio.
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.
