Mr. K points out that the Etch-a-Sketch toy helps students understand graphing. You turn one knob and the x-coordinate changes; you turn the other knob and the y-coordinate changes.
That's a good point -- but I was surprised to learn that eighth graders (that's who Mr. K teaches) are familiar with the Etch-a-Sketch.
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I was surprised to see that they knew what it was too. I expected completely blank stares. And I'm quite sure that they haven't used one in years but there was still a chorus of Ohhhs that went up when I first showed that to them.
They learned about the Etch-a-Sketch from Toy Store, of course.
I always mention the Etch-a-Sketch when teaching about parametric curves. One dial is x(t) and the other is y(t).
When I was a kid I was obsessed with drawing a perfect circle on my Etch-a-Sketch. Indirectly, I learned about sine and cosine, because you'd have to turn one knob as sine and the other as cosine, and even got an inkling of how they are derivatives of one another.
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