Geogebra - Dynamic Mathematics for Everyone

GeoGebra is an interactive geometry, algebra, and calculus application, intended for teachers and students. Most parts of GeoGebra are free software. GeoGebra is written in Java and thus available for multiple platforms.

Its creator, Markus Hohenwarter, started the project in 2001 at the University of Salzburg, continuing it at Florida Atlantic University (2006–2008), Florida State University (2008–2009), and now at the University of Linz together with the help of open-source developers and translators all over the world. Currently, the lead developer of GeoGebra is Michael Borcherds, a secondary maths teacher.

After a successful Kickstarter campaign, GeoGebra plans to expand their offerings to include an iPad and Android version.

GeoGebra is dynamic geometry software. Constructions can be made with points, vectors, segments, lines, polygons, conic sections, inequalities, implicit polynomials and functions. All of them can be changed dynamically afterwards. Elements can be entered and modified directly on screen, or through the Input Bar. GeoGebra has the ability to use variables for numbers, vectors and points, find derivatives and integrals of functions and has a full complement of commands like Root or Extremum. Teachers and students can use GeoGebra to make conjectures and prove geometric theorems.

Most parts of the GeoGebra program are licensed under GPL and CC-BY-SA, making them free software. However some parts, including the Windows and Mac installers, have a license which forbids commercial use and are therefore not free software.

Download Free Software geogebra here.  And GeoGebraTube is the official repository of GeoGebra constructions and GeoGebra related resources.

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Active GIF Creator 3.5 (AGIF)

Active GIF Creator 3.5 (AGIF) is a powerful, intelligible, compact and affordable gif maker for creating and optimization animated GIF- images, buttons, banners and other Web graphic that attract attention of your site visitors.

With Active GIF Creator you can:

• make GIF and AVI- animations for the Web and presentation materials;
• make banners;
• make 2D and 3D buttons;
• make various graphic using effects and other program tools;
• add hidden signatures to GIFs to protect them from unauthorized use;
• develop creative imagination.

 Program features:

- makes animated GIF- files from set of BMP, JPEG, ICO, PCX, PNG, TGA, PSD- files, and Windows Metafiles;
- imports frames from other GIF- files;
- imports and exports AVI- files, ANI- files (animated cursors) and bitmap strips;
- supports clipboard operations for images (BMP);
- manages list of images;
- edits images using internal image editor or script editor;
- duplicates, merges, crops, resizes, rotates and flips frames;
- defines GIF- files global parameters: GIF size, logical screen size, background color index, number of loops in animation;
- defines offset, transparency, interlacement, delay, title and value "how to remove" for each separate image;
- applies effects to whole image or to its rectangle part;
- puts particles on image;
- uses image collections;
- edits color palettes;
- creates 2D and 3D button images;
- creates animation scripts;
- adds and removes text commentaries;
- optimizes size of GIF- files;
- shows GIF size and download time for different speeds of modems;
- allows to preview your GIF- file on Web pages with different backgrounds;
- adds hidden signatures to GIFs to protect them from unauthorized use;
- creates GIF- files from command line in batch mode;
- saves images of GIF- file as a set of BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF or TGA- files;
- saves created animation as a project in a file with extension .agif;
- creates maps for tag <MAP> in HTML;
- generates HTML links;
- supports localization tools for different languages.

Reasons to buy Active GIF Creator.
Virtually every popular image editing software title comes with an option to create animated professional looking GIF images. Yet, most people find these built-in tools very counter- intuitive, complicated and almost impossible to use.

• Active GIF Creator has many useful features, like support of most popular image formats; internal image editor; rich image editing options; image effects; color palette support; import / export to other graphical formats; advanced open picture dialog (thumbnailer); GIF- file size powerful optimization; HTML image map editor; button creator; batch mode; image collections; animation scripts and others.
• The program's functionality in combination with the low cost has made it the first choice for many users and software evaluation websites. Plus, Active GIF Creator has a user- friendly, international interface and consumes very little system resources.
• All registered users are entitled to free technical support and minor upgrades.

If looking for a well-rounded, efficient and affordable tool for creating great-looking animated GIF’s, stop by Active GIF Creator! Editors of 3d2f.com named the program "most perspective among competitors".

Download Active GIF Creator 3.5 (AGIF) sofware here

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Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office

 

Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office is a great application. It focuses mainly on Students and Teachers to help in their school work.

It contains the following programs

(1) Learning Essentials for Students
(2) Learning Essentials for Teachers
They both include a lot of templates you could imagine to be useful in school work. Templates for book report, class debate, essays, etc are for students. All of them have different subcategories like different types of essays, and their formats with a short description on how/what-to-dos

For example,
"Subject:
In a short paragraph, describe the subject of the book.

Setting:
Explain where and when the story takes place.
Tip: it might be helpful to include maps, pictures or historical information about the setting. "
...................
is what I found for a book report.

Even while you are working on the matter in MS Office, a small window still remains on the right side, to help you remind what all things you need to add, the format/style you should follow, etc.

This is really cool

For Teachers, we see lesson plans and assignments, classroom organization, organization of field trips, charts and diagrams, math worksheets and even handwriting practice.
It includes provision for creating content for "Learning Essentials" to help students.

(3) "Learning Essentials Content Development Kit" is a program with a "wizard" interface to help us use the programs easily. It has step by step procedure for selecting the type of document, whether you are a student or teacher, what you want to do, etc.

Download Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office here

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Games in Learning

The Games in Learning project focuses on how game play, game study, game development and game innovation can be used to improve student learning outcomes.
The project includes workshops, practicums, a conference and research and development.

Why games in learning?

Digital games already play an important role in many students' lives. In the 2006 financial year, Australians spent more than $1 billion on digital game hardware and software.
Purposefully selected games blended with carefully constructed learning experiences can be used to improve student learning outcomes.
They can improve student learning because they:

• open up opportunities that would be otherwise unavailable or too costly or too dangerous to make available to students
• require students to exhibit behaviours such as self-monitoring, pattern recognition, problem recognition and problem solving at a deep level, principled decision-making, qualitative thinking and superior short-term and long-term memory
• engage students.

The best games engage students by being:

• challenging, complex and scaffolded
• immersive - they provide an interactive virtual play environment
• goal-oriented (eg. Make the world a better place, be a hero)
• fast-paced
• able to offer immediate feedback
• story-based
• customisable - students can make it their own
• a way to connect with people.

Significant student learning can also take place through designing and developing games. Designing and developing games can:

• build students' story telling skills
• encourage cooperative learning
• engage students in problem solving and higher order thinking
• encourage planning and reflection
• be a multi-disciplinary exercise - developing a good game can involve composing music, script writing, story development, physics, visual arts, spatial arts and much, much more
• introduce students to programming (Programming is a key skill necessary for the 21st century. To prepare students for 21st century lives, we must extend their programming abilities)
• encourage students to consider a career in the games development industry (The Australian games development industry is growing at a fast rate. It is amounting to revenues of $110 million. 37 per cent of Australia's digital games industry permanent employees are based in Queensland.)

Learning intentions

The program seeks to:

• develop, guide and support networks of teachers around a number of games in learning focus areas
• identify future (through research and best-practice) focus areas for digital game-based learning.

The focus areas for 2007-2008 are Machinima, using game-play and game-study in the middle school to increase student learning outcomes, building games and virtual worlds.

Program structure

Program elements include:

• three-day games in learning practicums
• games in learning email list
• workshops
• games in learning conference
• games in learning reference group
• games in learning web community.
• research and development into virtual worlds.

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Create graph "Love Function" Using Google

Google continuesly spoils its users, and this time especially for you – the math lovers. Google has announced its new service by integrating a facility that allows users to plot graphs of mathematical functions in its search engine.

Simply start with the command plot or graph, and type the functions to be plotted using simple syntax. Google will display the graph function in a wink.

Here are the graphs of some basic functions.

plot cos x, x/5, exp x

Below is a graph of the "love function" that is panetrated by a straight line.

graph sqrt(cos x) sin(300 x) + sqrt(abs x) - 1, x - 0.5, from -2 to 2

If you want to do advanced computation online, you can try Wolfram Alpha that use Mathematica as its computational engine.

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GeoGebraTube is a Community Site for Teachers

GeoGebraTube is a community site for teachers who teach with GeoGebra to share and find a wide range free resources. On GeoGebraTube visitors will find user-created tutorials, lessons, and worksheets. Visitors can search for resources by age group, language, and material type. All materials are freely available for noncommercial reuse.

Applications for Education

If you're a mathematics teacher whose school is using GeoGebra, GeoGebraTube could be a good reference to bookmark. When you start planning your next lesson browse through GeoGebraTube before trying to reinvent the wheel (or a lesson plan that someone else has already published).

GeoGebra Extra: What is GeoGebraTube?

In GeoGebra Sneak Peek 10, the last installment of my GeoGebra 4.0 Sneak Peek Series, I have mentioned about GeoGebraTube, the latest website of GeoGebra used for storing GeoGebra applets. I have used the site for almost a week and its running perfectly.  Although there are times that some applets do not show up, but  I think this has nothing to do with the  website. 

It’s probably because the GeoGebra 4.0 Release candidate is still being refined.

I have already created by my own “channel” and have uploaded several of my applets. All applets uploaded in GeoGebraTube include GGB files that you can download, but take note that these files are under Creative Commons, so if you use them, do not forget to link back.

For GeoGebra users, you can upload by going to the GeoGebraTube website or or by clicking File>Export>Dynamic Worksheet as Webpage(html).  In the Dynamic Worksheet Export dialog box, just select the GeoGebraTube option and to open the GeoGebraTube website.

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Educational software for Learn

In a broader sense, the term edutainment describes an intentional merger of computer games and educational software into a single product (and could therefore also comprise more serious titles described above under children’s learning software). In the narrower sense used here, the term describes educational software which is primarily about entertainment, but tends to educate as well and sells itself partly under the educational umbrella. 

Software of this kind is not structured towards school curricula, does not normally involve educational advisors, and does not focus on core skills such as literacy and numeracy.

manufacturers, including many established educational book publishers. 

Educational software on custom platforms

Some manufacturers regarded normal personal computers as an inappropriate platform for learning software for younger children and produced custom child-friendly pieces of hardware instead. The hardware and software is generally combined into a single product, such as a child laptop-lookalike. The laptop keyboard for younger children follows an alphabetic order and the qwerty order for the older ones. 

The most well-known example are Leapfrog products. These include imaginatively designed hand-held consoles with a variety of pluggable educational game cartridges and book-like electronic devices into which a variety of electronic books can be loaded. These products are more portable than general laptop computers, but have a much more limited range of purposes, concentrating on [[literacy]

Software in corporate training and tertiary education

Earlier educational software for the important corporate and tertiary education markets was designed to run on a single desktop computer (or an equivalent user device). The history of such software is usefully summarized in the SCORM 2004 2nd edition Overview (section 1.3), unfortunately, however, without precise dates. In the years immediately following 2000, planners decided to switch to server-based applications with a high degree of standardization. 

This means that educational software runs primarily on servers which may be hundreds or thousands of miles from the actual user. The user only receives tiny pieces of a learning module or test, fed over the internet one by one. The server software decides on what learning material to distribute, collects results and displays progress to teaching staff. Another way of expressing this change is to say that educational software morphed into an online educational service. US Governmental endorsements and approval systems ensured the rapid switch to the new way of managing and distributing learning material.

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