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Tech Integration Project
Lesson Accelerator: Project Launcher

Terrifying Tessellations
Application: Geometer's Sketchpad 4
Platform: Mac

Description

The process for creating the example project using Geometer’s Sketchpad® 4 is described below. The Completed Project Movie shows what the finished product might look like. The tutorial movies that follow demonstrate, step-by-step, how to construct the Terrifying Tessellations image using basic tools within the software application. Students are encouraged to explore other shapes that might tessellate. This project can be used as a way to show how Mathematics can be used in the Visual Arts, or vice versa. For a complete project description, including goals, objectives, and materials, see the Project Overview.
The Example Project
The Completed Project movie will show you what the completed example project looks like.
expand  Completed Project Movie
Tutorial Number Availability Status Tutorial Title Key # Length
1. preview What the example project looks like 72652 1:14
Subscribers have access to download the resource materials for this project, which includes all example files, an assessment rubric, and information about adapting and extending the example project.
Creating Your Own Project
We will begin by creating a new document in Geometer’s Sketchpad. We’ll learn how to create a segment and then a regular hexagon. By rotating the hexagonal shape, we’ll create an underlying grid of tessellated hexagons. We’ll use this grid for building the reptilian image that will form our final tessellation. We’ll create 3 interlocking reptiles of different colors. These reptiles will be translated in various directions to fill the page. We’ll then hide the underlying grid and learn how to print a copy of the final tessellated image.
Tutorial Number Availability Status Tutorial Title Key # Length
1. locked Saving a file 72637 1:31
2. locked Setting preferences 72638 1:06
3. locked Constructing a segment 72639 1:10
4. locked Constructing a regular hexagon 72640 1:56
5. locked Rotating the hexagon 72641 2:10
6. locked Tessellating the hexagons 72642 1:39
Tutorial Number Availability Status Tutorial Title Key # Length
1. locked Creating the tail 72643 2:04
2. locked Creating the head 72644 1:29
3. locked Creating the legs 72645 0:53
4. locked Constructing the yellow reptile 72646 1:02
5. locked Creating the red reptile 72647 1:03
6. locked Creating the blue reptile 72648 0:50
Tutorial Number Availability Status Tutorial Title Key # Length
1. locked Translating the reptiles pt. 1 72649 2:38
2. locked Translating the reptiles pt. 2 72650 2:25
3. locked Completing the tessellation 72651 1:27
Tutorial Number Availability Status Tutorial Title Key # Length
1. locked Hiding the hexagons 72653 0:46
2. locked Printing the sketch 72654 0:45
Tutorial series by Jeremy Anderson
©2012 Atomic Learning, Inc.   All rights reserved.