Mr. L's Math » GeoGebra

GeoGebra has just received the prestigious Tech Award

Bill Lombard — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:18:34 +0000

Markus Hohenwarter receiving the Tech Award in Education for GeoGebra

More kudos for GeoGebra; I continue to share this wonderful open-source software program with others and watch them experience the joy as they see mathematics come alive with power and creativity. My students experience this on a regular basis.

From the Tech Awards website: http://techawards.org/

“The Tech Awards program inspires global engagement in applying technology to humanity’s most pressing problems by recognizing the best of those who are utilizing innovative technology solutions to address the most urgent critical issues facing our planet. People all over the world are profoundly improving the human condition in the areas of education, equality, environment, health, and economic development through the use of technology. It is the goal of The Tech Awards to showcase their compelling stories and reward their brilliant accomplishments.

The Tech Awards is an international awards program that honors innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity.

GeoGebra is open-source software available for free through the Web that enables users to dynamically experiment with mathematical concepts.

Technology can play an important role in learning mathematics. Teachers and students alike often depend on interactive technology to learn about and experiment with math.

The dynamic mathematics software GeoGebra addresses all levels of education by joining arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and calculus. It features a very clean, easy-to-use interface. Since the tool is open source, a large user community has emerged to create interactive online materials for specific subject matters or a particular educational level. Having been translated into over 45 languages, it continues to expand to offer equal information access across the globe.”

Download GeoGebra and share with others at: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/

First North American GeoGebra Conference – Ithaca, New York

Bill Lombard — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:08:36 +0000

The First North American GeoGebra Conference will be held 27-28 July, 2010 at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York.

I’ve been honored to be a part of the Scientific Committee for this conference. This committee has the responsibility of reviewing conference proposals. I’m looking forward to an interesting experience seeing how others use the powerful program, and also what’s in the future for this creative software.

The website above has just been created and will be updated as information becomes available. Mark you calendar for an exciting two days with fellow GeoGebra enthusiasts!

GeoGebra Has New Features – Even More of a Good Thing

Bill Lombard — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:31:31 +0000

GeoGebra, the award-winning free software that math teachers are raving about, now has even more neat features:

A Spreadsheet – numbers in a different view!
Automatic animation – your graphs come to life!
Statistics functions and graphs!
Matrix and complex number support!
. . . and more!

Find out about all the details in the GeoGebra 3.2 Release Notes.

All new features are described in the fully revised manual GeoGebra Help.

The school year is starting – a great time to get your students off to a flying start with this wonderful graphic brain food!

CMC-S (Palm Springs) and CMC-N (Asilomar) GeoGebra Updates

Bill Lombard — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:21:54 +0000

My session on GeoGebra at the CMC-S Palm Springs conference was well attended. The room seated 120, and CMC staff had to turn away at the door many folks who wanted to see this great open-source software. I was pleased to be able to share a little of the story behind GeoGebra, its creator Markus Hohenwarter, and show the audience some of the spectacular things that teachers can do “with the greatest of ease.” Many audience members said they were going right home to download GeoGebra. Two weeks later I was asked to repeat some of what I had done at workshops for the Corona-Norco USD; response from these teachers was tremendous as well. Some of these teachers were downloading GeoGebra and creating some neat things during my presentation! I’ll be sharing this wonderful software again twice next week at the CMC-N (Asilomar) and the Technology Conference hosted by the California League of Middle Schools/High Schools & Computer Using Educators at Monterey, CA. The title of the sessions are:

VISUALIZE ALGEBRA & GEOMETRY CONCEPTS WITH GREATEST OF EASE

I’ll also be repeating my session on STAR preparation:

STAR TESTING: PREPARE STRESS-FREE STUDENTS & TEACHERS EASILY

Focus your curriculum while preparing students to perform well on the STAR by incorporating simple, easy-to-use techniques. Free, ready-to-use resources for students at, below, and above grade level.

Asilomar is always a great conference in a spectacular setting on the California coast.

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GeoGebra and the Varignon Parallelogram – Beauty, Structure, and Simplicity

Bill Lombard — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:58:07 +0000

The power and ease of use of the free open-source software GeoGebra is simply incredible! My freshmen and sophomores were in the computer lab today and they created several GeoGebra files to help them with their homework in the future.

They took to the software like a duck takes to water. After a few simple directions, they created the four different forms of a linear equation with sliders to animate the graphs. Several students went even further and created the standard and vertex forms of a parabola with animation. It was quite nice to have all students on task and no discipline or motivation problems.

I’ve uploaded a file used in Geometry called the Varignon Parallelogram; it’s used to show that the midpoints of any 4-sided figure, when connected with straight lines, form a parallelogram.

This is a fully interactive app for you to play with. Just grab a corner of the 4-sided figure (A, B, C, or D) and move it. You’ll notice that other parts of the figure move in response to your changes – this is called dynamic software.

There are two check boxes used to hide or show the diagonals of the original figure. The proof that the inside blue figure is a parallelogram is done in Geometry, so I won’t go over the details here.

One of the other nice features of GeoGebra is the Construction Protocol – it allows the user to see how the original construction was made. If you click on View/Construction Protocol you can see all the steps I used. At the bottom are controls showing you the construction step-by-step in real time.

Click on the following link to bring up the GeoGebra file The Varignon Parallelogram in a new browser window. Depending on your internet connection, it may take a few moments to appear.

You will need Java installed on your computer to run this app; most computers already have this installed. If you need to install Java, visit the Java website to download a copy. It’s free and available for all computers. And if you want more information about GeoGebra, visit the GeoGebra website.

Enjoy the journey, and let me know how you like it. Comments and feedback are always welcome.