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E-Submission

A new STAR for 2010

Last year Ann and I had the opportunity to rethink the See, Plan, Do, Check model that is closely based on the work of George Polya (see Polya, G. How to Solve It 1957). We never really liked the use to the word See, which doesn't really convey the first step of problem solving where you really have to sort out in your own mind what the problem is all about. And we had seen the excellent work of the Buranda SS teams, where their experiences with philosophy, for which the school is rightly famous, led them to reflect on what they had done, rather than try to find another way to solve the problem. Our resulting thoughts are encapsulated in what we have called the STAR model - which is summarized by the phrase

Be a STAR problem solver

We have included links to:

If possible, we would be delighted to receive solutions that follow the steps of the STAR model and welcome any feedback that you might have on the usefulness of breaking the problem solving process into those four steps.

How To Access the Applets

When you click on a diagram that has a hyperlink to an applet, your computer should launch your browser and the applet will start if your computer is Java-enabled. Initially, you may see that the applet has been blocked as this is a standard way in which your browser will try to block programs that could be virus plants. However, Java is completely safe in that respect, as the Java language does not allow a programmer to write anything to the computer on which an applet is running. So you can quite safely "Allow Blocked Content" and the applet should soon start to run.

If the applet still doesn’t work, you may well have to download the Java software from:

http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

You will need to locate and download the version appropriate for your computer. This can be quite a big download (around 16 Mb) and will be lengthy if using a dial-up modem. However, most classroom computers are Java-enabled as so much of the good stuff on the web uses applets.

How to Work with Applets

The purpose of the applets is to give the teams a ‘microworld’ in which they can experiment, have ideas, and search for solutions to the problems posed. As the team is working with the applet, you should expect to see them trying different cases and refining their thinking as they look for solutions.

Once they have found a solution, they will need to use <Alt><Print Screen> to capture a screen dump that they can paste into their solution document, using the Edit: Paste command. When the screen dump has been pasted into the document, the team may need to:

  • Right click the diagram and set the Text Wrapping to In line with Text.

  • Use the Crop tool to cut off any unwanted parts of the screen dump.

  • Select the picture and use Edit: Cut to cut the diagram and then use Paste Special: Picture (JPEG) to reduce the file size.

The last step is particularly important if a number of screen dumps have been collected as it reduces the file size by at least a factor of 10, if not more.

Document Identification

When saving the document, it really helps us if the solutions to all questions are compiled into a single document and that the the filename and header makes it clear where the solutions came from and which team sent them.

File Name:  The file name should make it clear the level, school name and team name. Thus if the Tigers from Tarata State School are in the Junior competition, they should use the file name Junior Tarata Tigers.docx for their solutions.

Header: To ensure that each page is readily identifiable, give the document a Header that includes  the Team Name, School and a Page Number.

 

Natural Maths : Ph 07 5533 2916 : Fax 07 5533 7244 : nmaths@naturalmaths.com.au