Mrs. Boyer’s 7th Grade Weblog

I started by searching “Fractals” and “Nature” and “Patterns”.  I like fractals because they can be so complicated yet start with such a basic concept.  I love the phrase “pattern of chaos” because it just seems so ironic to me.  This first site I liked because it goes through many types of fractals: simple, natural, etc.   You can click the links at the topic to see the different categories of fractals.
http://www.miqel.com/fractals_math_patterns/visual-math-iterative-fractals.html

I liked the Wikipedia entry for Fractals because it provides animations for both the Sierpinksi Triangle and Koch snowflake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

This third site I enjoyed because it looks into many topics in Science that involve Fractals.  These topics would be a great way for math and science teachers to collaborate.
http://kluge.in-chemnitz.de/documents/fractal/node2.html

Then I searched “Fibonacci” and “Phyllotaxis” and “Prime Numbers”.  This search did not lead me to nearly as many useful sites as the one above, but I did really like this Prime Factorization Machine, because students could use it to check their answers.
http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/jbprimefactor.htm

I also found this site helpful for Phyllotaxis since I wasn’t familiar with that term really at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllotaxis
Questions:

1. Were there ideas or concepts you were not familiar with? What were they?  I really had not heard of Phyllotaxis before, so that was the most foreign to me.  Nature is so interesting!

2. What images did you find particularly striking?  I liked the interactive images of fractals, because they help students visualize what’s going on.  I also really enjoyed the fractals in nature, because they are so amazing!

3. Can you identify any manifestations of nonlinear patterns within your home or your workplace? What are they?  Our schedule this week at school for PSSA testing was definitely nonlinear!  Additionally, the activity in my bank account lately has been nonlinear with preparing for a baby.

4. How can you adapt this webquest activity for your classroom?  In order to do a web quest with my seventh graders, I would have to provide specific sites for them to visit and specific questions or guidelines for them to explore.  I would probably also let them work in partners.

A non-traditional pattern is one that does not have consistent recurring set of events.  It does not have to be repetitive or symmetrical.  It may have segments that have patterns, but most are irregular.  These include family trees and concept maps.

A linear pattern is one that has a repetitive format.  It has the same rate of change between any two events.  The pattern may be increasing or decreasing but must increase or decrease the same amount in each interval.  Linear equations form straight lines when graphed because they have a constant rate of change between points.