Sketchpad & Data Tables

I was making a Sketchpad activity and discovered that you can collect measurements in a table.

The full instructions on how to do so are here (search for “Tables”). It’s relatively painless. Select the measurements, go to the Graph>Tabulate menu. There you go! To add more measurements, double click on the table. Done.

I really like this as a way for students to organize and analyze the effects of changes to the figure. I think too often they just click and drag on things without stopping to think about what is really happening. Of course a good worksheet to supplement the activity is necessary. I’m still working on that part.

If you’d like this file, you can download it here. You will need Sketchpad though. Just for fun I tried the “Save As>HTML JavaSketchpad” option. The full features aren’t available (like the table) but here it is (Java compatible browser required). I need to play with this option some more. It is on my list of things to figure out.

Speaking of which, does anyone know how to embed these Java Sketchpad files directly into a WordPress post? My trust aide gave me some code to do so, but WordPress didn’t like it.