GeoGebra (Dynamic Mathematics) blog

Competition on Acoustic Course Development

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Balazs

Do you use GeoGebra not only for mathematics teaching? Please read the announcement of an interesting competition on (STEM) course development. Please read the introduction below or visit the site of the contest.

Introduction

The GeoGebra community has brought to life an enormous collection of tools, demonstrations, explanations, quizzes, and alike with the GeoGebra software (interactive geometry, algebra, and calculus application). Colleyeder Ltd. and GeoGebra together now are about to make a step further and draw on the creative power of the community to extend and organize them. We would like to

broaden the scope to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

organize the individually created materials into courses that enable personalized learning. There are multiple options.

First of all we develop this new site for your ideas that we call STEMGebra.

We are interested in the answers to the following questions:

Can you improve the plan? What kind of improvements are you suggesting?

Do you envision alternative plans that would rely on the GeoGebra community?

Do you envision alternative routes to broaden the scope of GeoGebra?

The site is hosted by the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest at present to allow for an easy management and up-date of the intelligent components of the site. These components are meant to serve the community and we will try to extend them according to your needs. We describe these present and envisioned functions of our intelligent site.

The first step of the approach we suggest is a competition to make a course that has all the four components of STEM and makes use of the strengths of GeoGebra – geometry as well as algebra. We will start with a competition that develops an acoustic course. Developers will be encouraged to team up and submit a course material for two kinds of courses on acoustics – and the winning courses will undergo testing (at schools and by individual volunteers) in order to evaluate and improve them further.

The curriculum of such an initiative has the advantage of being

personalized for individual needs

dynamic

extendable (the STEM process is example based)

fresh/up-to-date

effective

Short term timeline:

Official start of the discussions on the site: January 1, 2013.

Official announcement of the competition: February 1, 2013.

Submission of courses on acoustics: April 30, 2013.

Announcement of the winners: May 31, 2013

Suggested time for taking and evaluating the courses is between June 1 and July 31, 2013. We intend to use high-tech tools for monitoring and evaluation.

Long term goals

We aim to go beyond the single course by our novel course development strategy employing innovative and high-tech methods of quality assurance and personalization. On a larger scale we want to build a ‘World Wide Observatory’ (WWO) for high-school education on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in order toexplore the needs and evaluate and improve the strengths of the training methods according to these needs. This covers talent discovery, tools for special needs, and the improvement of individual learning trajectories. We also intend to research the technology of an ‘Artificial Tutoring Buddy’ (ATB) – an artificial system that can reliably mimic the best teachers and the best practices under most circumstances. It is in question if the time is ripe for the development of an ATB, but there is no doubt that it should be useful for helping children and youngsters of remote and rural areas. In turn, we intend to establish the potentials and limitations of ATB technology.

Steps towards the ‘Artificial Tutoring Buddy’

In the testing phase we will monitor the behavior (facial expression tracking through webcam) of students during learning, including the behavior of and the interaction of – as well as the outcome of the interaction with – the teacher. Sophisticated monitoring methods will enable us to decide if this effort is promising for ATB development.

As we believe in gamification, we will set up a multi-player, internet-based, risk-taking game for students, called ‘Land and Fame’ on the portal.

This intelligent portal will be able to produce explanations of concepts related to words present on the portal, including conversations, e.g., chats and forum since it will be backed by Wikipedia and other knowledge bases.

By using a wiki system we generate an interactive dialogue, where users can comment, blog, chat or use the mediawiki pages for communication. Explanations and feedbacks of users serve to improve personalized information delivery, team forming, and course development.

Posted in Community Tagged with: acoustic, competition, contest, course, STEM

GeoGebra Ambassador #8

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Balazs

Who are you, what are you doing?
My name is Fabián Vitabar. I am a Maths teacher, from Uruguay. I work in a teachers training institute in Montevideo (IPA), I teach those who will be high school teachers.
I am really interested in Mathematics Education, specially in how can teachers help students to learn Maths. I think that GeoGebra is a wonderfull tool, but we still have to learn how to use it in the best way to reach our goal.

When did you first try GeoGebra?
It was in 2005. Someone talked to me about a new open source project involving dynamic geometry, and I tried it at home that night. I felt it was interesting and promising, but it wasn’t enough yet for my high school students. My sense changed soon. I followed each version since that year, and nowadays I use it more and more in my classroom.

What do you hate in GeoGebra?
There is something I really hate: GeoGebra is always giving me a challenge. It makes me think about my lessons, It makes me doubt about what I do in the classroom, or even about what i’ve been doing for many years and I never asked myself about. I can’t give a lesson just as I did it in the previous course, because I get a new idea using GeoGebra and I can’t avoid it: I have to plan a new lesson. I hate GeoGebra because It leads me to a permanent didactical thinking.

What do you love in GeoGebra?
I love that it’s always surprising me. There is always something new. But the most I love is it’s so easy for my students, and they love it immediately. They start working on it, and in a few minutes they are learning mathematics, playing, exploring, and teaching me! It’s amazing.

What are the GeoGebra related activities you participate?
I am the chair of the GeoGebra Institute of Uruguay, and I lead the Laboratorio GeoGebra experience in Montevideo, offering workshops and courses. We’ve recently hosted the annual Latin American conference in our institute, and I’m trying to keep in touch with every colleagues in our region. GeoGebra is growing really fast, too much people want to know about GeoGebra, and I’m doing my best for show them why it delights me.

Posted in Community, Interview Tagged with: ambassador, Fabian, geogebra, Latin America, South America, Spanish

GeoGebra Milestone CCITE 20-20 STEM Projects Internships and beyond

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Tony

I had a great time at the GeoGebra and Milestone Consultancy offices in Budapest. As a result of a presentation and discussion with extremely able Milestone social and natural science students who wish to intern with the UK, we came up with the idea of GeoGebra Milestone CCITE 20-20 STEM Projects Internships. By the time I got back to the UK nine students had signed up. We were expecting maybe two…so this got us thinking that maybe this could kick off a GEOGEBRA STEM network initially with a Budapest GeoGebra/Milestone network working with the Cambridge Centre for Innovation in Technological Education (CCITE), and then going global benefitting from the GeoGebra presence in so many countries.

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:

Posted in Community, GGB Tagged with: Cambridge, conference, events, prezi, STEM, Tony Houghton

GeoGebra Ambassador #7

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Balazs

Who are you, what are you doing?

I am Anthony C.M. Or from Hong Kong. I was a secondary mathematics teacher for many years and is now a curriculum development officer in the Education Bureau. My major duty is to develop some learning and teaching resources in Mathematics to cater for the learning needs of students at primary and junior secondary levels. I also conduct studies with focuses on how to improve learning and teaching of mathematics, and organize seminars and workshops for teachers.

When did you first try GeoGebra?

I first tried GeoGebra 3.0 in 2008 and found it a wonderful dynamic geometry software. Since then, I use GeoGebra a lot to develop learning and teaching materials.

What do you hate in GeoGebra?

I have nothing to hate in GeoGebra. I would love it more if its functions of text formatting can be further enhanced.

What do you love in GeoGebra?

I love its dual (Graphic and Algebraic) modes of representations and constructions. I love its powerful commands, scripting and the conditional showing of objects. I love the flexibility it provides such as the customizable toolbar and Java-based HTML output. I love its nice Graphical User Interface. I love GeoGebraTube. Finally, I love the freeness of GeoGebra, not only in terms of price but also in terms of the liberty to implement my ideas freely.

What are the GeoGebra related activities you participate?

I am a co-chair of GeoGebra Institute of Hong Kong. We organize GeoGebra workshops for teachers. We also develop websites to foster the use and sharing of GeoGebra materials suitable for Hong Kong curricular.

Posted in Community, GGB, Interview Tagged with: ambassador, curiculum, HK, Hong Kong

4th Annual North America GeoGebra Conference

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Balazs

The 4th Annual North American GeoGebra Conference will be held August 3 and 4 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. This FREE conference features over 50 content-based sessions, a 2-day introductory workshop, and a Digital Ethics Conference-in-a-Conference on August 4.

Markus Howenwarter and John Golden will be Keynoting the GeoGebra Conference. Richard Stallman will be Keynote for the Digital Ethics CiC.

Join the event! https://sites.google.com/site/ggbmidwest2013/

Support the conference! http://www.fundageek.com/project/detail/634/2013-GeoGebra-North-America-Conference

Posted in Community, event Tagged with: conference, north america, usa

From technophobe to polymath

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Balazs

I’m not a polymath yet, but I’m on the right way (at least I’m not technophobe) after Dr. Tony Houghton’s presentation at the Hungarian Geogebra Institute.

Tony took his first degree in psychology from University of Cambridge, his second one is in System Analysis and he gained his Eng.D in Communications Engineering. He started his career as a teacher, moved to a French human factors consultancy in Paris, then BT with whom he worked for many organizations in a consultancy role ranging from Essex County Council to Coventry University, University College London, Specialist Schools Academy Trust, Eurescom, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), AT&T, MCI, Nationwide, Pepsico, DHL, Microsoft, CISCO, Chunghwa Telecom, and Sony in Singapore.

Now he is Educational Development Director at CCITE (Cambridge Centre for Innovation in Technological Education). It was a real pleasure to attend his presentation and to ask some questions after it.

To combine psychology with maths and engineering at first could sound strange but at the end of Tony’s presentation I understood how the two things strengthen each other. What I always felt in our educational system (in a language class of a Hungarian high school) was also proven: engineering and science aren’t championed in the schools. Checking the statistics, the first 4 most popular faculties at universities are: business, law, sociology and art (in the UK, but I’m sure the Hungarian statistics are quite similar) It’s nice that students are interested in these beautiful subjects; the petty is that technology is missing – said Tony.

I remember in the high school we were scared about the math and physic lessons. These subjects were considered extremely difficult studies with absolutely no fun and enthusiastic within. Trying to learn these subjects without understanding them, can be a torture for everyone. I was faced so many challenges during my 17 years of studies also (e.g. there was no internet and not even telephone ;)) and if I didn’t understand something after our teachers’ explanation (it happened many times after math lessons) I had to wait with my questions until the next opportunity to ask them. Now students luckily are more open minded (and their teachers as well) and with internet and with a global and complex tool like Geogebra they can share their ideas from different places of the World, they can work like a real team. Tony’s opinion is that the personal interaction and the global side of Geogebra are as important as the maths.

During the presentation of a flying paper plane in Tony’s presentation I was so impressed that I would like try Geogebra in tango dancing as well, and finally I’ve recognized that there’s so much fun in math and engineering now! I’ve seen cca. 30 open minded young people attending the presentation, full with enthusiasm, some of them even ready to dance in the room 😉 I’m sure they are brave enough to ask questions and to try and prove their ideas with Geogebra. What was emphasized by Tony also, together we go still far. Engineering and math is not an alone career. You can try whatever you want as many times as you want.

You can come up with your own ideas at http://www.geogebra.org/cms/en

We can focus on what we know and we have the opportunity to be more spontaneous and creative.

– A Guest post by Edit Lovas.

A short video of the presentation:

Posted in Community, event, guest post Tagged with: Budapest, Cambridge, CCITE, Tony Houghton

GeoGebra Ambassadors #6

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Balazs

Micky Bullock is our youngest GeoGebra Ambassador. He tweets a lot about GeoGebra and uploads great materials to his GeoGebraTube account.

Who are you, what are you doing?

Micky Bullock. I teach mathematics at Forest School, an independent secondary school in London. I teach children from the age of 12 all the way up to the age of 18 including A-Level Further Mathematics.

My blog is called The Secret Garden of Maths (www.mickybullock.com). I use it to showcase GeoGebra apps and share solutions to interesting problems. Do take a look!

I’m interested in how I can use computers to enhance the experience of learning mathematics in school. I frequently employ GeoGebra in the classroom and try to teach the students how to use it. I write GeoGebra apps in my spare time for whatever mathematical need takes my fancy. I’ve created apps about probability, projectiles, differential equations, binomial theorem and expansions, just to name a few, and I’ve recently finished the Easy Mortgage Calculator. I always aim to make the apps as ergonomic, aesthetically pleasing and accessible as possible. I also try to make them unbreakable, for example ensuring you can’t lose points off the side of the screen or combine parameters in a way that makes the equations break down when they shouldn’t. My main aim, though, is to allow the user, whoever they are, to learn a mathematical concept simply by playing with the app. It’s fun, but my perfectionism sometimes keeps me up all night!

When did you first try GeoGebra?

I remember seeing a link to GeoGebra on the desktops in my first placement school when I did my teacher training at the University of Leeds in 2009. My first glimpse of its potential was in January 2010 during a university workshop on maths software. The member of staff drew a triangle, constructed that triangle’s circumcircle and inscribed circle, then started dragging the vertices of the triangle around. I watched as the circles moved smoothly and resized continuously. It was beautiful to watch and it seemed to open up a floodgate of creativity in my mind. My love of GeoGebra had begun. Since then I’ve been tinkering with it almost daily.

What do you hate in GeoGebra?

There’s a huge difference between small and medium font size. Also the text isn’t intelligent, for example if you set it up to show y=mx+c, with m and c numerical parameters, when c is negative it will say, for example, y=3x+-2. Or if m is zero it will say y=0x+-2. We wouldn’t normally write this. There are workarounds but they are fiddly.
The spreadsheet can be slow and cumbersome when there is a lot of data.
I can’t get it to automatically write information to specific cells in the spreadsheet.
When people share rubbish apps on GeoGebraTube.

What do you love in GeoGebra?

It’s open source.
It’s free.
It’s delightfully easy for students to use in a basic way
You can create interconnections between all sorts of objects and you can attach variables to things like the view window and the RGB and opacity.
Boolean algebra in the “Condition to show object” field
GeoGebraTube for sharing apps
I also love how fast it is being developed. GeoGebra is taking over the world!

What are the GeoGebra related activities you participate?

In November 2012 I attended the Computer-Based Maths Education Summit at the Royal Institution in London.
In October 2012 I gave the opening keynote address at the X Jornades D’Educació Matemàtica, a conference at the University of Alicante. The talk was entitled, “The Value of Dynamic Geometry in Modern Education and Problem Solving in GeoGebra”
I’ve given talks at the MEI (Mathematics in Education and Industry) conferences in 2011 and 2012 on use of GeoGebra in education.
I’ve given talks at the MathsJam conference in 2010, 2011 and 2012. In 2010 my talk was entitled, “Playing Lemmings with Discontinuous Functions” and in 2012 I generated a profane graph that swears at the viewer.
I attended ICME-12 (The 12^th International Congress on Mathematical Education) in Seoul, Korea in July 2012. Here I met Balazs Koren and Zsolt Lavicza. I was surprised and excited to see one of my own apps used in a demonstration of GeoGebra such a long way from home.

Posted in Community Tagged with: ambassador, geogebra, twitter, uk

WebRTC is now available for public

Posted on November 16, 2012 by gabor

Concerning this post, in the 23th version of Google Chrome the WebRTC specification is available without any “flag” to modify. What this means to us that the “Capture Image from WebCam” option of GeoGebraWeb now available for millions and millions Chrome users!

Cheers, and see you on the (GeoGebra) Web!

Posted in GGB Tagged with: GeoGebraWeb

Dashed lines in HTML5

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Balazs

With the release of Chrome 23, 3 out of 4 major browsers now support dashed curves in HTML5:

~~Safari 5.1.2: FAIL~~
Safari 6: OK
~~Chrome 16.0.912.77: FAIL~~
Chrome 23: OK
Firefox 9: OK (uses mozDash)
~~IE 9, 10: FAIL~~
WebKit build 104795: OK

GeoGebra is believed to be the first major web application to make use if this, eg http://www.geogebra.org/web/milestones/dashedCurves.html.

And the GeoGebra developers were instrumental in persuading Google to implement this in Chrome. Visit the Google Code topic to read the whole conversation.

Posted in Development, GGB Tagged with: dashed, development, html5

Competition on Acoustic Course Development

GeoGebra Ambassador #8

GeoGebra Milestone CCITE 20-20 STEM Projects Internships and beyond

GeoGebra Ambassador #7

4th Annual North America GeoGebra Conference

From technophobe to polymath

GeoGebra Ambassadors #6

WebRTC is now available for public

Dashed lines in HTML5

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