Geometry, Google Sketchup, and Family Math Night

Heather Kloer, Computer Teacher, St. Thomas More School, Decatur, GA

One of the main reasons I attended the Georgia Educational Technology Conference on November 15-17, 2006, was to participate in the excellent Google Sketchup workshop offered by Daniel Rivera of SEGA Tech.  I had discovered this free, flexible, and amazingly powerful 3D design tool (available http://sketchup.google.com/product_suf.html) and wanted to learn how I could present it to my students.  I not only  learned some important Google Sketchup techniques, I also gained access to one of the most useful and creative instructional technology resources, http://segatech.us/   and the Feedblitz Blog to RSS email digest subscription that I eagerly await several times a week.

Every February, my school, St. Thomas More School of Decatur hosts a Family Math Night. Students and parents cycle through different math stations, enabling both to participate in a variety of games, simulations and real life math activities.  Because of my interest in encouraging students in their geometrical thinking, I set up nine laptops loaded with Google Sketchup 6 and the downloaded self-paced tutorials (http://sketchup.google.com/sptutorials.html ) in my designated area of our gym.  Three of the laptops were dedicated to each of our levels, primary, intermediate, and middle school. 

For the primary level, I created a 2D activity (click to view sample) Note, the native sketch file is viewable with the free download of  Google Sketchup which required students to drop and drag the name of the geometrical shape to that shape which comprised part a simple house drawing. Clicking on a new tab allowed students to use a few basic Sketchup tools to create their own simple house drawing.  I displayed simple instruction sheet (MS Word ) next to each laptop so parents could assist their student (or the students assist their parent!) in accomplishing the task.  Intermediate students were provided them with an instruction sheet (MS Word ) that invited them to complete parts 1 and 2 of the interactive downloaded self-paced tutorials.  The middle school students’ instructions (MS Word ) invited them to complete all three parts of the downloaded self-paced tutorials and to take on the STM Challenge: recreating our main school building (MS Word ) The sample linked (here) is indicative of the type of work done that evening.

The Sketchup station was highly popular on Family Math Night for all levels.  Students enjoyed their engagement with geometrical thinking and were fascinated by the abilities to change the point of view through the variety of tools Sketchup provides.  Parents were interested and were pleased I provided a set of resource links (see below).  Finally, many of my colleagues, from all grade levels, expressed an interest in collaborating with me in the computer lab on various geometry related lesson plans.  Because of the flexibility of this tool in adapting to the needs of different aged students, I look forward to doing so.

SEGA Tech’s Free Online Google Sketchup Course

Google Sketchup Home Page

Sketchup for K-12 Education

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