The geometry of house designs

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a field test of the software The Geometry of House Designs.; Sixty-one 7th and 8th grade students spent four days working through a software program designed to develop their understanding of geometric concepts. The interactive program required students to measure dimensions using a ruler controlled by the mouse. Most students tended to measure around the outside of a shape rather than measure the dimensions necessary for computing the area. Significant improvements were achieved by students after completing the program. Most of the improvement was found to be in solving problems involving rectangles.