Playing with Push Toys and Technology: Solving a System of Linear Equations

When students are given the opportunity to utilize technology and engage in hands-on activities within a mathematics class, they can experience mathematics in action. Mathematical action technologies “offer students opportunities to interact...in ways that are not possible (alone) with paper and pencil” (McCullough et. al, 2021, p. 739). One such mathematical action technology, for instance, involves a calculator-based ranger (CBR) which collects and displays motion data in real-time. As CBR activities impact students’ abilities to interpret and model “physical phenomena” which enhances graphical understanding (Kwon, 2010), I have incorporated various CBR activities that involve students walking in front of a motion detector to create or replicate a particular given graph (Remijan, 2019). After engaging students with CBR activities within my classroom, as well as outdoor activities involving crash reconstruction and the Illinois State Police (Remijan, 2017), I developed an additional activity to model a “crash” within the classroom using push toys and a CBR