Week Seven - Spinners Virtual Manipulative

Click here: Spinners

This virtual manipulative is simple, but it has excellent applications. The number of spins can be changed, and the spinner can be altered in a number of ways. The number of colors, the colors themselves, and the size of the colored regions can all be changed. The particularly nice thing is that you can record the results of the spins. These results are presented in a graphical form, which students can copy and transfer onto a sheet of graph paper. Thus, this virtual manipulative can be used to teach graphing skills. In addition, the virtual spinner has applications with regard to probability and percentage calculation. Students can calculate the theoretical probability and then compare it to the experimental probability. In addition, the bar graph results can be converted to percentages.

Obviously, "real-life" spinners could be used in a classroom. However, it is not likely that the color choices and the size of the colored areas on the spinner could be altered. In addition, it would take a long time to spin a spinner hundreds of times and record the results. Thus, for many reasons this virtual manipulative is better than a "real-life" manipulative.