Comments on: Asilomar #2: Geogebra

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:47:33 +0000

....Breaking news...... I used Geogebra in my Alg. I classes today, and it wasn't even just so I could write this here! In other words, it was (I feel) a legitimate use. We're working on point-slope form, and taking an equation in point-slope form and converting it into slope-intercept form, and the associated graphing, etc. What I like about Geogebra (but what GraphCalc can't do) is that it'll take input in slope-intercept OR point-slope (or even standard) form.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:28:56 +0000

Hey,

I use this program in Calculus and Pre-Calculus courses as wel. It is able to draw graphs that depend on parameters. It calculates derivatives and draws Riemann-sums (with the number of intervals possibly being a parameter).

It is great to build demonstrations/animations for use in a teacher centred approach. But it exports to interactive webpages, letting you build activities/explorations for pupils with ease.

I also use it for graph creation for my exams (it is one of the few programs that even exports PSTricks (LaTeX)).

OK, sorry I’m a Belgian fan.

By: Rich

Rich — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:20:05 +0000

I was fortunate enough to hear Markus Hohenwarter present a workshop at FCTM a year ago — he’s the creator of Geogebra. Of course when I went in, I didn’t know that, but it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t just some guy who liked the program and wanted to present it — this was THE guy who wrote it. But since it’s freeware, he wasn’t like most of the commercial presenters who talk in generalities about some issue for the first half of the session, and then spend the second half of the session selling THEIR product/service. He just showed us how it works, and repeatedly said, “I don’t really care if you use it or not” (not in a negative way, just that he wasn’t going to benefit financially whether or not we all decided to use it).

My particular course load doesn’t lean very much in the geometry direction, so I don’t do much with constructions, etc….. I prefer to use GraphCalc for my Algebra students to play around with changing parameters in the slope-intercept form, etc. Unfortunately, it’s no longer being actively developed but the old version is nicely stable.