Sarah Inkpen

Creativity or the building of thought patterns is the ability to use visual or previous experience to solve problems never encountered before. Integration of technology into the calculus curriculum has totally changed what and how we teach. Previously, math had become a series of templates and algorithms with very little relevance to the world outside of school or in the advancement of higher order thinking skills. With our rapidly changing society, it is essential that educators empower students to be life long learners; aiding them in knowledge building, and encouraging collaborative work. Inclusion of interactive math labs, graphing calculators, and multimedia animation's have all been towards this goal of visualization and knowledge building. However, because virtual reality emphasizes multisensory, multidimensional information-presentations, it offers a wider range of representational and presentation tools, bridging many disciplines and providing a more powerful synergistic learning tool.

Virtual reality is a new way to use computers by providing more direct and intuitive interaction with information. By wearing a head-mounted visual display and tactile interface devices, students can actively inhabit an inclusive computer-generated environment. An immersive virtual learning environment designed to have students interact with basic calculus concepts such as rotation of solids, centre of gravity and radius of gyration, will help facilitate understanding, transferability and knowledge building. This assimilation, transforming previously abstract mathematical concepts into dynamic and manipulable objects, will give students an opportunity to create a firm foundation for further discovery and experiential learning in calculus. For example, the thought pattern created by finding the volume of a sample thin disc (Dx thick) and then using the summation power of the integral to find the whole volume can be applied to find the amount of work done or the amount of force exerted without further explanation. The students will have to override the learned experience of using algorithms or memorized patterns and trust in their knowledge building skills.

Further 'microworlds' will be developed in collaboration with the students. The choice of a math carnival, as the theme, is deliberate. If we hope to show the power and applicability of calculus we need to put it in a different, fun context. In keeping with the carnival theme, rides will be designed based on parametric equations, slides following trigonometric waves where students will exit on tangents (a secant would produce a collision with the slide), video games where the targets follow certain functions 'sinkable' only with the right tangent line; Hall of Mirrors to illustrate transformations and rotations; House of Horrors, mathematical nightmares like canceling over addition and integrating over a discontinuous function.