I will try to describe some of these problems and give recommendations that might help alleviate them. Students are presented with short video-based situations in which teenage characters encounter realistic mathematics problems. Students can save and print their written solutions and teachers can score the students work using rubrics that come in the Teacher s Guide. The mathematics in MathLab is carefully tied to the NCTM standards for grades 5-8 and focuses on number sense, algebraic thinking, data analysis, probability, and geometry. The computer-based tools in MathLab include a spreadsheet, data table, scatterplot, histogram, box plot, function grapher, spinner, calculator, and dynamic geometric sketches.
Different problems require the use of different tools, many of which can be linked.
The tools can also be used alone, without opening a MathLab problem. User trials have shown that students of different ability levels are interested in MathLab. Students enjoy learning about the power of computer-based mathematics tools and they also appreciate that the problems involve believable characters. Waltz, one of the ChemViz tools, is a web-based interface to DiSCO, a computational chemistry tool that calculates electron densities and molecular orbitals. Students use Waltz as a web-based computational laboratory for designing experiments that can answer their questions concerning such abstract concepts as electrons, atoms, molecules, and chemical bonding.