I'm ashamed to say that I have nearly lost all knowledge of Math.  

It's not like I didn't understand it once upon a time, nor did I ever hate it.  Quite the contrary.  Despite the fact that my obsessive love with politics and history won out as my major in university, I still adored all things Math.  Why? It's objective, it's factual, it explains phenomenons in the world and you can get a "right" or "wrong" answer -- the latter being something that I thirsted for as a Type A personality who had written over 100 subjective essays in my university career.  I even willingly took Calculus as an "elective" in university, just because I needed to reconnect with my old friend, Math. (for the record, I killed in that class).

But here I sit, years later, with same vague recollection of terms like limits, derivatives, logarithm, and inverse trigonometric functions floating around in my head.  So it comes as no surprise that I had to reach out to my PLN to get assistance with a basic Trig problem earlier this week.  And no, I'm not going to rehash it, since I'm already embarrassed that I had to show a lack of Grade 6 skills to as many people that did see those tweets! Let's just say, I owe it to the 28 people who looked at my Google Document with the Math problem and assisted me with my answer :)

Since I've been re-living my Math glory days and coming to the sad realization that those days are long gone, I thought it was only fitting to feature a Math-focused website for today's Fresh Look Fridays post.

Enter GeoGebra. Available as both a free download, or an online applet, this fantastic Math resource allows students to interact with Geometry, Algebra and Calculus in a dynamic way. 

As their QuickStart guide states:

"In the most simple manner, you can do constructions including points, vectors, seg- ments, lines, and conic sections as well as functions, which can be altered dynamically by mouse afterwards. On the other hand, also the direct input in school-notation like g:3x+4y=7orc:(x–2)2+(y–3)2 =25 is possible, including differentiation and integration are at your disposal. The most remarkable feature of GeoGebra is the dual view of objects: every expression in the algebra window corresponds to an object in the geometry window and vice versa."

What does this mean? I have no idea, but it's super fun to play with.  I encourage all of the math teachers that are part of my PLN to explore GeoGebra's functionality and I'm confident that you will see immediate application in your classroom!  A big "thank you" to Shawn Urban for showing me this website in a recent workshop! I can't stress the importance of experts sharing areas of their expertise with their group, and I, for one, am hugely in debt to the great teachers that I work with every day!

As with all Fresh Look Fridays websites, I envision the most successful usage of this website as a center-based activity for a small group of students around a SMART Board.  What a fantastic way to explore, create, question and practice either new concepts or old standbys crucial to their Math curriculum.

Who knows? Maybe this site will help the next generation of Math enthusiasts retain their knowledge just a bit longer than I did :)

Enjoy your weekend,

Vanessa