GeoGebra

GeoGebra 20-20 STEM Challenge: Call for New Interns and Mentors!

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Tony

Tran Minh Phuc and Bence Karpati have successfully graduated their Geogebra Internship.Following a presentation with Milestone students in Budapest GeoGebra offices at the end of last year, we agreed a challenge  to identify and put together new and existing best practice Geogebra resources into a STEM 20-20 framework. We identified a number of excellent resources and the activity chosen by Tran and Bence was to develop a new GeoGebra resource and in so doing report how easy (or not) they found GeoGebra, and also the way in which they learnt and developed their expertise.

Their reports found evidence for the ease of GeoGebra per se, and also the immense impact of GeoGebra as a global community learning tool. In their own words:

I could easily use the basic functions without any tutorials. I found some useful videos and tutorials in the GeoGebra forums and on YouTube. This video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-VUbKGL2r4 helped me to understand the basics of animating in GeoGebra. I used this forum topic http://www.geogebra.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17468 to learn how to create moving squares. It seems to me that the GeoGebra community is very active. There was a forum topic or video for everything I searched for. It took very little time to find answers to my questions. I think I learned a lot about how real work is done at a company. We had Skype conferences and real life meetings.

The internet was also tremendous help for me. Geogebra.org has its own video tube, own forum where you can share opinions, ask questions, suggest solutions etc. This creates a whole Geogebra community which i believe is a key essential for this software. We held skype conferences regularly to keep each other updated, we have a Facebook group which made communication and organization much easier. We also have a headquarter at Milestone where at the beginning many presentations took place to introduce Geogebra and GeogebraSTEM.

This physical and virtual mix has proven very powerful. The Geogebra STEM examples from around the world and framework can be seen in: GeoGebra STEM: http://prezi.com/92z8atpqk1gr/geogebra-stem/

The work of Tran and Bence evidencing the impact of the GeoGebra tool and community can be seen towards the end of:The Impact of Geogebra – Evidence: http://prezi.com/bsi-qdd6jr6r/the-impact-of-geogebra-evidence

We are now issuing a call for new GeoGebra Interns and also Mentors from all over the world! The project will be again based in the Budapest Milestone office, but now open to the 149 (and counting) Geogebra Institutes around the world!

The challenge, focussing on GeoGebra STEM and the community, will be announced and launched June 15th.  It could be a summer project or longer. Deadline for completion will be October 15th.

To register your interest, please contact Julia Vida before the 15th June at institutes@geogebra.org

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Google Education on Air GeoGebra hangouts

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Balazs

Today is the last episode of the Google Education on Air hangout series. If you missed the episodes, you can watch them on YouTube, or embedded here.

1) EDU ON AIR – Introduction to GeoGebra Chrome App
Recorded in Las Vegas, while I was Sloan-C / MERLOT conference

2) EDU ON AIR – Using GeoGebra’s Geometry View
Recorded in Denver, Colorado close to the NCTM exhibition hall. There were some problems with the internet connection, but you can see the GeoGebra booth at the NCTM.

3) EDU ON AIR – Using GeoGebra’s Algebra View
Back in Budapest, algebra view.

4) EDU ON AIR – Using GeoGebra’s Spreadsheet View
Spreadsheet view, had some problems refreshing the views. New version came out soon after the hangout, so there shouldn’t be any more problems.

5) EDU ON AIR – Fun with GeoGebra
Invited some developers, GeoGebra Ambassadors. We are going to show some great applications and the future of the Chrome application.

Information to this episode:

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GeoGebra in Venezuela (TEM Group)

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Balazs

Today let us present you the impressive story of the TEM (Technology in Mathematics Education) Group from the Faculty of Education and Humanities at the University of Zulia (LUZ), Maracaibo, Venezuela.

Juan Luis Prieto, Rafael Luque and a few other enthusiastic math professors decided to form the TEM Group in November 2011 because they realized their students needed more up-to-date knowledge and skills in addition to their regular curriculum. Initially, their main aim simply was to offer them space for reflection on mathematical concepts and the methods to teach them.

Soon enough they identified technology in math education as a major topic that is really necessary for their students. Similarly to other Latin American countries, in Venezuela the Bolivarian Government has decided to distribute computers to schools and children in order to provide the conditions for the integration of technology into education. They have given out about 3 million laptops to primary students. However, it remained necessary for teachers to develop skills and knowledge to apply them in their teaching practice.

Juan Luis claims that GeoGebra was a pretty obvious choice for them because of it being open source, accessible to everyone and easy to use. This is how it all started.
By today they have developed five scopes of action “Líneas de acción” as they call them and they structure their work along these lines:

  1. Professional development for teachers and educators. They develop and organize GeoGebra workshops where teachers get an opportunity to re-think the way they teach mathematics and integrate modern technologies as tools to make their practice more effective. In 2012 they had 160 participants, among them there were primary school teachers, secondary school teachers of math, physics and technical drawing, pedagogical coordinators and students of math education.
  2. Developing resources for teachers. They create GG activities and theoretical guidelines as well as technological resources for the workshops to hand out for teachers. These tool-kits help teachers see the mathematical content they need to teach in their classes in a new light.
  3. Continuous self-study. The members of the TEM Group keep asking themselves: what do they need to learn themselves in order to better help their students? Towards that end they hold self-study groups led by TEM members and they invite national and international experts to assist them as “critical friends”.
  4. Investigation- They build their projects of investigation- aiming at understanding better the processes that work in the improvement of math education – on the results of and conclusions from their workshops. Their university students, students of math education are integrated members of their group. The students are working on their own research projects, currently there are five in progress. Last year they presented for example at the Latin American GeoGebra Congress in Montevideo, Uruguay and in early 2013 at the International Pedagogical Conference in La Habana, Cuba. They are going to publish their results in their university’s journal as well as the GeoGebra Journal of the GeoGebra Institute in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
  5. Social action- In addition to the narrowly science-related work the TEM Group also organizes awareness campaigns for making students more sensitive to social issues and problems of the education system. The explicit aim is to get their students more deeply committed so that they can apply the knowledge and skills they get from TEM  for the improvement of education in underdeveloped regions.

If you are interested in learning more about the TEM group or if you would like to cooperate with them you can reach them through their facebook page or e-mail: grupotem11@gmail.com

Photos:
TEM (3)

Taller “Enseñanza de Cuadriláteros con GeoGebra”, Diciembre de 2012.

TEM (5)

Taller “Enseñanza de Triángulos y Cuadriláteros con GeoGebra”, Julio de 2012.

TEM (4)

Actividad de Autoformación (conversatorio) con el Dr. Dario Durán, Febrero de 2012.

TEM (6)

Actividad de Autoformación (videoconferencia) con el Dr. Juan Pablo Echeverría Embajador de GeoGebra para Latinoamérica.

TEM (1)

Participación en la Conferencia Lationaméricana de GeoGebra Uruguay 2012 posando con el Dr. FabianVitabar, Comité Organizador del evento.

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Newsletter 2013 April

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Balazs

Dear GeoGebra Friends,

after the Easter holidays we are all heading back to work and we at GeoGebra want to make teaching and learning easier and more fun for you:

And we invite you to our upcoming US and online events:

Hope to see you soon!

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GeoGebra Roadmap

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Balazs

As always, our development team is working hard behind the scenes to improve and extend GeoGebra based on the valuable feedback from you, our user community. Today, we would like to let you know about our plans for the months ahead and our planned next releases.

2013: GeoGebra Web & Tablet Apps

Our main focus right now is on improving GeoGebraWeb (more information: spreadsheet, right click, etc.) to make our software and all your GeoGebraTube applets work very well in web browsers without the need for any plugins. Recently, we have also made great progress with our CAS integration in GeoGebraWeb.

CAS integration for GeoGebraWeb coming soon...

At the same time, we are working hard to use GeoGebraWeb as the basis for GeoGebra Apps with a new touch interface for tablets. Our goal is to get the first Apps ready this summer before the start of the next school year.

2014/15: GeoGebra goes 3D and fully Web

The main new feature of our upcoming new desktop version is a fully integrated 3D graphics view which you can already try out in our GeoGebra 5 Beta release. As we are making fast progress with GeoGebraWeb, we are also planning to include the 3D there using WebGL technology. As you can see, our long-term goal here is to bring all of GeoGebra’s versatile functionality from the Java desktop to web browsers and thus to all platforms including tablets and mobile phones.

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ChromeApp News, HTML5 GeoGebra

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Balazs

We’ve been working hard to improve the GeoGebra Chrome App.

Some of the improvements include:

  • The Derivative command (and hence the Tangent Tool) are now working for all functions (rather than just polynomials as before)
  • Integration now works for most common functions (not just polynomials as before)
  • The Spreadsheet is now working for simple copy & paste operations (the spreadsheet tools aren’t implemented yet)
  • Double-click to redefine and the right-click menus now work in the Graphics View
  • There are now more options for loading and saving. As well as uploading directly to GeoGebraTube you can open directly from Google Drive. You can now also save and load .ggb files locally.
  • The Chrome App is now working in the same languages as GeoGebra 4.2, so try it out in your language!

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GeoGebra Learning Communities in Kerala

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Balazs

In our previous blog post we wrote about challenges of GeoGebra in India and introduced some workshop activities. Now, we are going to share news about the GeoGebra Institute of Kerala, which works in a unique way: it teaches GeoGebra and launches new social businesses at the same time. Sebastian Panakal, chair person of GGI tells us about their current work and plans.

Sebastian some years back established an eSchool, which was the first school in Kerala to train teachers to go online and become certified wiki educators: he teaches mostly English language classes, but other subjects as well. School children above 12 can also become teachers and earn money with their new knowledge. Sebastian now  trains the students in GeoGebra free of charge, helping them to use GeoGebra in their school curriculum and get them to introduce GeoGebra to newbies. Students who  volunteer as junior GeoGebra Ambassadors are awarded a certificate at an official ceremony in the school. Students enjoy the recognition, and present themselves in media reports about the GeoGebra Institute of Kerala. This way students  communicate in English and develop their language fluency. At the same time, they also learn cross cultural skills and become digital citizens. This project has attracted many school leaders and officials who have become all excited about GeoGebra and some of them are planning to open new GeoGebra institutes in their schools.

GGI of Kerala also started to open full fledged GeoGebra Kiosks in schools of Allepey Diocese where students, teachers and families come together in the evenings to teach and learn GeoGebra in English. After school, Sebastian Panakal links students with students in other countries and they teach GeoGebra to their peers abroad  to help them solve their Maths homework.

The financial model behind this is the following: GGI of Kerala will plough back 50% of the fee collected at Sebastian Panakal’s training (fee for Learn English Online from learners and fee for eTeacher Training from teachers enrolled to become Online Facilitators) to set up GeoGebra Kiosks. The GeoGebra Kiosks are managed by student cooperatives, monitored by PTA & Social Networking Homes (in short: SNEHOM; snehom means love in Sanskrit). Thus these Kiosks work as self-sustaining business models empowering the villagers.

So how does it work in day-to-day practice?  “We started first by contacting schools, meeting the Principals in Allepey Diocese, where The Corporate Management of Education is really interested in professional development of their teachers. Meanwhile, the project has gained a lot of publicity several media reports have  come out highlighting the Skype interactions between teachers and students. The school appears in the news, the students become stars- says Sebastian proudly.

On 22th March, 2013 the first introductory event was held for teachers, but I will continue to mentor individual schools, invite them one after the other to set up GeoGebra Kiosks in schools.  I will get teachers trained, and get students  use GeoGebra and establish GeoGebra interest groups.

“The whole project is revolutionary; the time is ripe and I am confident of success!”

Follow up (http://geogebraindia.blogspot.hu/) GGI Kerala and Sebastian’s great work!

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GeoGebra in India: perspectives of GeoGebra in developing countries

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Balazs

An important issue in teaching mathematics with GeoGebra is how the so called developing countries can get access to it and benefit from this software. We will follow up here with a series of blog posts on GeoGebra activities in India, edited together with our Indian GG friends.

In countries like India educational software technologies seem still out of reach due to internet access problems in schools and the high cost of most educational softwares. Since GeoGebra can be downloaded for free on a single laptop, then uploaded to many computers, and can be run without any internet access, it creates a favourable learning environment.

Other than Internet access, another critical factor is the IT knowledge of teachers working in a digital environment. A “higher aim” set in the Indian National Curriculum Framework now is to the develop the children’s inner resources to think and reason mathematically, to be able to come to logical conclusions and handle abstraction. This requires teachers to fundamentally change their teaching methods. That is also why professional development related to GeoGebra is not only about learning how to enter a digital environment, but also about discovering its new, pedagogical potential in everyday teaching.

Other than one-time workshops, regular follow-up activities and an easy-to-reach mentoring system are necessary, too, so that teachers feel more confident about the use of the software in their classes.

GeoGebra Institutes in India provide high quality, children focused trainings and support teachers while overcoming these problems.

After a successful GeoGebra workshop in Bhilai, another one was held also in India, 9 10th February, 2013 at the Delhi Public School in Patna, Bihar State. The workshop was organized by Delhi Public School in Patna in order to get the participating teachers acquainted with the use of the software and discuss how to integrate it into everyday teaching. Dr. Praveen Kumar Chaurasia (Assistant Professor, GI National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), see http://pkchaurasia.iitiancollege.info/) was the resource person for the workshop, and focused his training on the possibility of using GeoGebra in child-centered learning, highlighting the pedagogical aspects of the software rather than technical ones. Dr. P.K. Chaurasia also talked about the National Curriculum Framework in India and its recommendation for child-centered learning which can be fulfilled using Geogebra. His experience tells us that children use GG as a cognitive tool that helps them to construct meaning based on their prior knowledge and conceptual framework. He showed the participants how to design applets using the software. Right after this session everybody created their own applets.

In the next blog post we will share the latest news about the work of GeoGebra Institute, Kerala, which is now linking GeoGebra with its empowering social business activities.

Guest post by Réka Berkes

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ORBIT/GeoGebra Primary Mathematics Competition – Results!

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Tony

Wow! The power of GeoGebra is in both the maths and the community. We had some excellent entries and as per the rules are forced to pick three winners. But to keep you on the edge of your seats :-)

Our judges were Janet Blair from the University of Cambridge ORBIT team, two primary school children (the youngest 5) and myself. You can see the entries by searching ORBITCOMP in GeoGebraTube. Some were very good but did not include the required necessary descriptions for ORBIT, some were apparent duplications, but more than three were really excellent. Janet from the ORBIT team now says’ I’m a big fan of GeoGebra and I look forward to integrating some of these resources into the enquiry-based learning unit of our OER4Schools online professional development resource.’ We will be contacting authors. (http://orbit.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/OER4Schools).

So…here are the results:

3rd place goes to goldenj (the number and representation game), ‘I could already see an improvement in my 5 year olds counting strategy after a while of playing it.’ says the parent.

2nd place goes to irinaboyadzhiev for positioning fractions

1st place goes to Orchiming Anthony Or for variety of areas and fixed perimeters

In conclusion, we thank and salute the professionalism of our entrants and the power of the GeoGebra community, note the fact that GeoGebra can be used by 5-year olds, and are considering what to do with a late entry describing a GeoGebra workshop for 240 children average age 8! WOW!
http://www.geogebraitalia.org/corso-base-geogebra/

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GeoGebraWeb – Spreadsheet view and more…

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Balazs

GeoGebra is not only available as a desktop application, but in the web browser too. You can try GeoGebraWeb

Today we are announcing the new Spreadsheet view in GeoGebraWeb. You now have the Algebra, Graphics and Spreadsheet view available in your web browser, all based on HTML5 without the need for any plugins. It is now also working in 44 languages (with Hindi as a new language) and variants.

Our development team is continuously working to make GeoGebraWeb better, faster and add more and more functionality of our desktop application. It would be great if you could give us feedback and suggestions in our GeoGebraWeb User Forum.

What is working now:

  • Graphics, algebra, and spreadsheet view
  • Tools and style bar of the graphics view
  • Input bar
  • Open and save ggb files, also with Google Drive

What is coming next in GeoGebraWeb:

  • Right-click menus
  • Properties dialogs
  • CAS view
  • …
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