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"David Cox sent his students through Function Carnival where they tried to graph the motion of different carnival rides. (Try it!) Every student's initial graph was wrong. No one got it exactly right the first time. But Function Carnival doesn't display a percent score or hint tokens or some kind of Bayesian probability they'll get the next graph right. It just shows students what their graph means for that ride. Then it lets them revise."

"Function Carnival changes that. Students watch a video. They try to graph what they see. Then they play back the video and see how their graphical model would be represented as an animation. Does what they meant to graph about the world actually match the world?" This is an explanation of a new online math tool called "Function Carnival." The link to the tool is in the opening paragraph. Further explanation of the tool can be found here: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=18420

"The point here is that the technology made the conversation easier. Instead of creating 20 different examples of graphs and seeing what happens as each variable is changed, students were able to visualize the changes, both in the graph representation, and in the formula representation. When asked if they noticed anything after the "Point on the line" slider was changed, one student said they noticed the Intercept-slope form of the equation did not change. Another student responded to him with "that form of the line doesn't depend on which points you use.""

Lesson ideas for this resource @ http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/waberry/2014/03/06/tuvalabs-datasets-to-promote-critical-thinking/

"In my honors Algebra II class of sophomores, I always look forward to doing a culminating project on quadratics.  We start at the beginning of the chapter with introducing the project and having the kids break up into groups of 3 and 4 and start designing and building a catapult outside of school.  " This seems like a fun activity that could be enchanced by Logger Pro and/or Desmos (www.desmos.com). Logger Pro would allow the students to video a sample shot of their catapult and then break down the distance of their shot at specific intervals/times. Desmos would allow the students to graph the quadratic and place their catapult at the correct location in order to hit their target.

"Empower your students to think critically about data, ask meaningful questions, and communicate their conclusions."