You know yourself how good GeoGebra is, and so do the millions of users. But we are trying to go further. We wish to collect hard evidence on the impact of GeoGebra.

This may come from activities you have undertaken or that you know of, for example:

• Best practice examples: lesson plans and evaluation
• User quotes
• Controlled studies
• Statistical evidence
• Academic/journal or conference articles

In return for sharing with us, we will feature your work in GeoGebra blog posts, in a PREZI presentation GeoGebra STEM – Impact and Evidence, a joint academic presentation…and last but not least the US Mid-West GeoGebra journal.

To get the ball rolling, based on a quick Google search, we have already found evidence which you can see on:

But this is just a start – we want to collect better and better evidence showing the impact of GeoGebra! Please send your information – lesson plans/research articles/studies/links etc to this e-mail address, with the subject line: EVIDENCE: institutes@GeoGebra.org

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, 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

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/

Members of the GeoGebra community will vote for the top 25 activities, and experts in primary maths will designate the three winners. The three winners of the ORBIT/GeoGebra competition (and probably some of those on the shortlist) will have their activities posted on the ORBIT wiki alongside teachers from prominent teacher education institutions.

This is a unique opportunity to have your name associated with a high profile, innovative University of Cambridge project.

For further information, see: http://orbit.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/ORBIT/GeoGebra

Members of the GeoGebra community will vote for the top 25 activities, and experts in primary maths will designate the three winners.

The activity must be open-ended to some degree, supporting interactive teaching and active learning. We are looking for investigations that allow children (age 6-10) to explore an element of mathematics for themselves.

Submitted GeoGebra files and instructions must include:

1) a short overview (max 200 words),
2) list of learning objectives (max 3),
3) description of the underlying pedagogical/teaching approach or rationale (max 50 words),
4) compulsory teacher’s note (max 250 words) which provide instructions, useful tips and recommendations (submissions without teachers’ notes will not be reviewed).

For further information, see: http://orbit.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/ORBIT/GeoGebra

NB: Prizes include University of Cambridge tee-shirt, mugs, bags and a University of Cambridge/GeoGebra Certificate!

Background and three-stage approach
CCITE propose a set of 20 STEM (Science Technology Engineering Maths) problem solving projects per year to address the technological education teaching weaknesses in the UK (too narrow, not enough teachers, technophobia and high drop-out rate). However, this is not just a UK problem – it is in varying degrees global. And GeoGebra provides a powerful tool to help – the power of Geogebra is in both the software and its Global network and Institutes. We came up with a three-stage approach:

GeoGebra Milestone CCITE 20-20 STEM Projects Internships
Milestone students might individually and/or in small teams be short-term interns who:
* Identify or indeed develop best practice GeoGebra resource which might be used on these STEM projects.
* Work together developing their communication and teamworking skills in a multi-disciplinary manner.
* Form a start-up Budapest Milestone Geogebra network, interworking with the Global and in particular Cambridge network.
* Present their Geogebra CCITE 20-20 solutions on Geogebra site and/or ORBIT (the Cambridge University Open Resource Bank for Interactive Teaching).
* Receive a signed Cambridge attestation (certificate/letter) of their work.
* Any student who is interested would first discuss with their Milestone tutors. A lead Milestone tutor will mentor the team, and subsequently students may enter in contact with CCITE cc their tutor.

Budapest Geogebra CCITE STEM Collaboration
We might extend this initially with the Budapest educators present at our presentation and discussion. Indeed we are delighted to announce our first collaborators: Colleyeder (www.colleyeder.com) and Eötvös Loránd University (http://nipg.inf.elte.hu).

Global Geogebra CCITE STEM Collaboration
We might extend this further with our global GeoGebra friends in many countries of varying international education ratings (see OECD http://www.oecd.org/pisa/CIEB http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/). The highest rating (Shanghai) supports our approach and we feel there is huge potential for global multi-way learning:
The Shanghai core curriculum is the same for all students, an enriched curriculum permits students to choose their own electives and an inquiry-based curriculum is implemented mainly in extra-curricular activities. Learn to solve real-world problems, on cross-disciplinary studies and on the ability to solve problems of a kind that one has not seen before. Notwithstanding Shanghai’s outstanding performance on the PISA assessments, many in Shanghai still see its education system as too rigid and its students as not sufficiently independent and creative to meet the challenges ahead.

We welcome any help we can get:-)

PS See Prezi:
PISA and GeoGebra STEM: