Windmills II

The c-book unit ‘Windmills II’ presents a different twist of Don Quixote story. It begins with Don Quixote confronting 30-40 windmills he mistakes for giant enemies, but, after being close to them he realizes that they are damaged windmills and he wants to repair them. The opportunity is grasped to review the various types of windmills, in order to provoke constructing, de-constructing and reconstructing shapes of windmills, sails, windmill-wheels and models of windmills making them rotate and work properly. These goals are supported by the affordances of c-book technology; the interplay between narrative and activities, the use of half-baked microworlds, the availability of dynamic manipulation by the use of sliders, the potential of experimentation and modeling etc.

In particular it aims for students to:

• Explore angular and side relations in triangles, parallelograms and regular polygons, cones, cylinders and pyramids.  Use transformations like rotational symmetry.
• Use properties of proportional amounts, trigonometric relations, linear and quadratic relations in constructions and modeling.  

The design of the c-book unit was based on the “low threshold – high ceiling” rational with the aim to be used from lower to higher secondary education.

Available at:
http://mc2dme.appspot.com:80/mcs/tablet/DWOplayer.html?locale=gr#c:5441733328371712