Sunday morning, I was driving to Santa Barbara with my son Paul, his wife Holly, and his two sons Rhys, age 12, and Archie, age 7. I am sitting in the back seat with my two grandsons, somewhat bored. Like most boys their ages, Rhys and Archie are on their iPads playing video games. Spoken like a true son of a retired math teacher, Paul asks Rhys to show Grandma the app he is using to practice math concepts that he is learning in his seventh grade math class. Rhys opens the app, Algebra Tiles Playground created by his Great-Uncle Fred, my brother. You can find the Algebra Tiles Playground app at Ventura Educational Systems.
Together, Rhys and I slide the positive (black) tiles and negative (red) tiles on the screen to create the requested binomial expressions in Level 1 of the Algebra Tiles app. Then we progressed to Level 2, to create the trinomial expressions on the iPad screen. Finally, we worked through Level 3, by placing the positive and negative tiles on the screen to add binomials. Paul and Holly, sitting in the front seat of the car, are listening to our conversation as we are traveling to the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum. Archie, sitting in the back seat to the right of Rhys, is very quiet but listening and observing our algebra discussions.
We arrived at the museum and joined Fred, Marne, and their daughter, son-in-law, and two children and their son, daughter-in-law, and two children. Rhys and Archie are impressed that they are spending the day with Great-Uncle Fred, someone who develops apps for the iPad. We enjoyed the day visiting, to name only a few, the gem display, Chumash exhibit, dinosaur park, and butterfly tent.
On the drive home, Archie opened the iPad to the Algebra Tiles Playground app and created pictures by placing the positive tiles and negative tiles on the screen. Archie said, “At the top of the screen, it says Algebra Tiles Playground. I decided to create pictures.” He made a picture of a happy face. Then he explained that the face had an expression of 3x2+5x+9. While we were at the museum, Archie lost one of his baby teeth. So, I asked Archie, what is the expression if the happy face lost a tooth. Archie without a pause answered, “3x2+5x+8″. He proceeded to remove a black tile from the smile to prove that his answer was correct. Remember, Archie is 7 and just starting second grade.
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