Week-7 Smart Board/Geogebra

On Tuesday, the class we attended in the basement of the library was held, was all about a program called Geogebra. I thought this program was excellent. This really had me interested and pondering to learn more about the program. To me it is very similar to Geometer's Sketch Pad but it is a more user friendly version. In this program you can easily create parallel lines and use sliders to help students understand how a graph works. Of all the programs we have used so far in class, I find this one the most interesting. One big reason I like this program is the column on the left that shows you everything you have, without getting in the way of what you are working with, like GSP does. I really liked how the upper tool bar had multiple tools in each tool section, and you can highlight one to do multiple things with the same tool. I also liked how you can hide something in this program by pressing the "radio buttons" to the left of the object in the left column. I also like how everything is on a graph setting. In this you can put an equation into the input column and get yourself a picture. I loved how easy it was for a student to understand the concept of derivatives with this program by finding the tangents really easily and then just plugging in Dervativef(x) and it shows you the derivative. As you can tell my enthusiasm with this program shows that I may have wished to chose this technology at the beginning of the semester. The one downfall I see with Geogebra is that students may become too quick of learners with it and become bored as they finish their work sooner than the other students. This meaning the simplicity of the program is the only downfall I see. Also I think the girls did a very good job in selecting their topics and creating their worksheets for the tasks that were presented in class. I could definitely seeing them blossom into phenomenal teachers in mathematics and their execution should be noted and looked up to so that we have more teachers like them in the future.

When it comes to Smart-Board I had my pros and cons on the matter. My pros would have to be how many things you can accomplish with the program itself. Being able to represent pictures for your classroom in such a way can really help students see what is going on. I think this would be great for having images and typed words up there and then using Smart-Board to edit or add insightful things students have to say. My experience with this technology is limited so my reaction is thus limited in a way that I cannot evaluate it to my fullest capability. My pros can only be that it is too much fun!! I think I would spend hours on that thing amusing myself. I'm sure I am not the only one who thinks this, I just may be the only one who is willing to admit it. I really like the capabilities it has, but in a general sense, I am not too sure how I can implement it into my class right now. Maybe I just do not know enough about it to really give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. I do know that it has limitless possibilities that I have not even come to realize. If I were to chose between the two technologies we explored this week outside of our own would have to be the Geogebra program. I think the simplicity of the program will allow students to understand the material rather than trying to understand the program itself. If you have a program that is too difficult, say Mathematica, students spend most of their time trying to understand the syntax of the program rather than furthering their education.