I wanted to share with you the wonderful opportunities my student has had with the new AGC software. Brandon is a 9th grader in Kalamazoo County. He has been a hard working technically inclined student all of his life.
This year, Brandon began Algebra. He understood the concepts and was doing very well in his class. About 3 weeks into class, things changed. Brandon began a section that required him to graph equations. His graphs were elementary at best and were created using wikki stix and tactile graph paper. He worked for at least a half an hour per graph and when he’d arrive to class, the graphs were falling apart and he was unable to reproduce the work he had done. His math teacher and I were completely disheartened and Brandon was discouraged to say the least. When we first discovered AGC, I though it might be too good to be true. However, we needed to try something, so, Brandon, myself and the math teacher worked diligently testing it to see if it would do the trick. I must say there were some glitches the matrix part didn’t work at all), but overall, we were elated. Brandon’s ability to work with the software was uplifting! He was able to produce his line graphs in about 2-5 minutes tops! Homework that was taking him up to 6 hours a night became about 1/2 an hour to an hour of work. Brandon’s confidence rose! He was embarrassed about his graphs prior to AGC. When he comes to class now, his classmates are jealous of his professional looking graphs, and he is proud to show them how he made them. We also purchased an Emprint, so now, he is printing the graphs and getting tactile feedback….fantastic! The most exciting news I received this semester is that Brandon scored the highest score in the class on his Algebra class. I attribute this to his persistence, his great ability to adapt, and to his skills that were greatly boosted by using the AGC.
Brandon and I were so thrilled with his success with the product, we felt it necessary to share with others. Feb 9th, Brandon and I will be presenting at the Michigan Tech Blizzard in Livonia. I will also be presenting about the AGC at the CEC conference March 1st in Grand Rapids and April 26th at the MAER Conference in Livonia. Thank you so much for creating such a beneficial piece of software!