Thanks to support from GeoGebra, Marcell was able to travel to the USA last week and attend the Rubik’s Cube World Championship 2013 in Las Vegas, see the following video: Marcell at Rubik’s Cube World Championship 2013

Marcell was very successful and is now world champion for blindfolded 3×3, 4×4, 5×5 and multi 3×3 cube solving. We are happy that GeoGebra made it possible for him to participate and live his passion for math and science. Congratulations, Marcell!

Do you want to meet Marcell in person? You will get a chance at the GeoGebra conference in Budapest in January 2014.

As a new institute, born in the summer of 2012, our main goal is to make GeoGebra easy to reach for Mongolian educational institutions, professors, students and teachers. The first step on this probably long road was translating the software (GeoGebra 4.0 and 4.2) to Mongolian language since we think getting acquainted with the software in one’s  mother tongue is the most essential for it becoming  popular. Then we started to organize local workshops: first at the National University of Mongolia, School of Mathematics and Computer Science with 20 participants, then at the Mongolian State University of Education with 100 participants, both held in December, 2012.

Mongolia is quite a big country, its territory is more then 1 500 000 km2. Almost half the population, 1 700 000 people live in Ulanbator (literally “Red Hero”), in the capital. Navchaa, our chair is very enthusiastic about designing video tutorials, which she shares with primary and secondary school teachers to help them introduce GeoGebra into their classrooms. Till now, a huge number,  840 teachers have participated in her video lessons from almost all provinces in Mongolia; this year she is planning to produce some more  video tutorials.

This summer we plan to finish translation of GeoGebra 5.0 into Mongolian language. As Navchaa works at the National University of Mongolia as a professor for teaching initial teacher students to Mathematics, and her research focus is the integration of ICT into Mathematics teaching, this year she will integrate GeoGebra into her “Introduction of Mathematical software” course.

Organizing competitions both for students and teachers will be part of our plans for this year to make GeoGebra even more popular and fun.

For more information please visit our site at http://www.smcs.num.edu.mn/geogebra and join our facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/GeogebraMNG.

My name is Talgat Bainazarov. I have been teaching mathematics in secondary school. At the moment I am a vice-principal at newly opened Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Karaganda.

I am the translator of GeoGebra UI into Kazakh (my native language) and the Chair person in the GeoGebra Institute of Astana

When did you first try GeoGebra?

I first tried GeoGebra in 2009 when I was a university student on a workshop for prospective teachers held by a public school. Since then GeoGebra has become a good friend of mine.

Year 2009 was just an introduction. I didn`t go deep into it. A great impact on my enthusiasm was made in 2011 by the first GeoGebra ambassador Guillermo P. Bautista Jr. I came across to his blog when I was searching for step-by-step tutorials. I learned a lot from his tutorials in his wonderful blog Mathematics and Multimedia.

He brought me an idea of establishing a local GeoGebra Institute (there are 3 in my country now). After having learned to use GeoGebra step by step, I started to produce videotutorials and presentations in Kazakh.

What do you hate in GeoGebra?

The only thing that I feel pity about is that 8 years had past for this wonderful software to reach me. I wish I had known and used in my study at school.

What do you love in GeoGebra?

I love people in the GeoGebra community. All of the members of team are so responsive, enthusiastic and helpful that newly involved people in the community are easily “infected” by their passion to spread dynamic tool for mathematics to everyone. I have students, who in some way have become teachers, in the GeoGebra Institute of Astana, because they are making video, presentations and translations. They have created a public page on a social network.  They are sharing their knowledge and ideas. The feeling of contribution in the education has been driving them ahead. I guess, the same can be told about all the students around the world who are involved in the GeoGebra community.

What are the GeoGebra related activities you participate?

• The first activity is the workshop for maths teachers that I led in my hometown Kostanay in 2011
• The next year AEO “Nazarbayev Intellectual schools” invited Zsolt Lavicza to Astana for the August conference and a two day workshop. I assisted him on the workshop
• In May, 2013 we hosted Zsolt Lavicza and Istvan Juhos for the workshop. This visit was very productive, because we managed to meet a lot of important people who became more interested in the GeoGebra. We are expecting good changes in the development of mathematics in Kazakhstan.

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

Gerrit has given about 40 workshops all over  South-Africa since the establishment of the GeoGebra Institute in 2009. Many education ministry officials and math-teachers from Gauteng, Limpopo regions and the Free State have attended these workshops.

Based on his long teaching experience he has compiled an easy-to-follow GeoGebra 4.2 manual (based on the school curriculum), which you can download from the geogebra tube: http://www.geogebratube.org/material/show/id/39024. This manual has short YouTube video illustrations of each section.

Gerrit has also written articles evaluating his teaching experience, you can download his research results here:

• Stols, G.H. (2012). Does the use of technology make a difference in pre-service teachers’ geometric cognitive growth? Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 28(7), 1233-1247. (ISSN: 1449-5554 & impact factor: 1.655)   http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet28/stols.pdf
• Stols, G.H. &Kriek, J. (2011). Why don’t all maths teachers use dynamic geometry software in their classrooms? Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 27(1), 137-151. (ISSN: 1449-5554 & impact factor: 1.278) http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet27/stols.html

Our development team is working hard on the tablet apps. Do you like the new simple, fresh and clean look of the app?

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:

• Zbynek showed how inequalities work in GeoGebra. Read more about inequalities by Guillermo our GeoGebra Ambassador.
• Play with the application Fabian created and presented.
• This is still Java based, but you have seen, it is going to work in the Chrome app soon.

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:

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:

• You can now use Spreadsheets and Right Click in our GeoGebra Chrome App
• We shared the Development Roadmap, so you all know what to expect soon
• You can collect ideas from the winning 3 entries of the ORBIT competition
• You can learn from India: Part 1, Part 2

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

• April 9 in Las Vegas: GeoGebra at the MERLOT Award Ceremony
• April 12 online: GeoGebra on Air Hangout online workshop
• April 16 in Denver: Register for the free GeoGebra Day before NCTM
• April 17-21 in Denver: GeoGebra Booth #1433 at NCTM

Hope to see you soon!

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.

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.