A "must have" skill in geometry is the ability to manipulate objects mentally. Students need to be able to visualize congruence and transformations. In the classroom, students are restricted to the use of manipulatives and paper. It can be difficult to "see" these ideas.
"Geogebra" is designed to be a virtual manipulative. This software allows teachers and students to construct objects and explore the math that defines the objects. They can rotate, translate, scale, etc, the objects and provide visual proof geometry concepts.
The software is free to download or can be run in an applet window from any computer. It is compatible with multiple operating systems and formats. Constructs can be exported for use in Office products, virtual learning environments like Moodle and other third party editors.
The software seems user-friendly, but some advanced skills may be needed to use the export feature or other, less mainstream, operating systems. In order to make full use of the power of the software in every class period, each student would need a computer at their desk to participate with the lesson. The current version is not compatible with the Java script which runs on tablets, but revisions are being made to correct this issue.
You can find this program, along with a number of user-submitted lesson constructs, can be found at: www.geogebra.org.
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