Guide Sheet for Web Lesson 2 "In Search of Descartes"

Preliminaries

• You are to work in three-member teams.
• Print this page by using the Print command on the menu bar above. (You may want to print 3 copies.)
• READ through the entire guide sheet before you begin.

Research

• Your group will be randomly assigned an aspect of Descartes' life to research.
• To complete your research, visit 4 websites as outlined below. Use a separate sheet of paper for each website and write the name and address of the site at the top of each page. You will be using these notes as well as being evaluated on them, so make sure they are neat, legible, and complete!
• YOUR GROUP ONLY NEEDS TO PRODUCE ONE SET OF NOTES INCLUDING ALL 4 SITES!

Follow the links to these web sites: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive and The History of Mathematics Archive at Trinity College, Dublin. Take notes on any information pertinent to your topic. Use one of the search engines that we practiced with yesterday, (Yahoo, Excite, WebCrawler, etc.) to find two other sites providing information on Descartes. Browse these sites for additional information on your topic and take notes as appropriate.

Visual Displays

Tomorrow and the next day, you will be working on a visual and oral presentation that either summarizes your findings or highlights an important aspect of Descartes life related to your topic. As you are doing your research, think about the content of your visual and the form it might take. Possibilites for the visual presentations include, but are not limited to: puppet show, skit, power-point presentation, over-head transparancies, cartoon, etc. During the last few minutes of class today, make some preliminary determinations about the form of your visual and report them to me, so that I have appropriate supplies and equipment available.

Evaluation

Your group will present your visuals three days from today.

You will be evaluated as follows:

24 points for web site notes (6 pts. each site): address(2), neat (1), thorough(3) 76 points for visual/oral presentation: accuracy (25), creativity (25), presentation(26)