Clearly designed as an aiding tool for teaching Mathematics at any level – from elementary to high school -, GEONExT is a fine drawing application that will help teachers and students alike in generating high-quality mathematical visualizations that, in some cases, would not be possible to create and share with the class otherwise.
The beauty of this tool is a wise combination of a number of issues. Firstly, this is a free tool. In most cases, this is only good news, but when it comes to educational materials, the economic side of things becomes more relevant. Being a free tool, GEONExT guarantees that ALL teachers and students can have easy access to it and interchange their projects and experiences.
Secondly, you do not need to own a computer to enjoy working with GEONExT – apart from the downloadable version (the one reviewed here), anybody with temporary access to Internet can use its online version. That’s right – you can use it online (at the project’s website) and save your exercises and drawings in your preferred portable storage device.
Thirdly, you do not need to be mathematician or a drawing artist to use GEONExT. It perfectly combines simplicity with accuracy. You will not need to draw even the simplest straight line – the program will do it for you. It just needs to know where you want it to begin and end. You just need to know how to do one thing – use your mouse. You can start off with any of the shapes and objects available in its built-in libraries, and just by dragging and clicking your mouse you will be able to create the most amazing mathematical visualizations. You can choose from lines, circles, arrows, points, polygons, graphs, angles, texts, calculations, etc. And to help you place them correctly in the “board”, you can use grids and coordinate systems. Everything you draw in GEONExT can be saved to file in “geonext” format, or sent to the clipboard as an image.
GEONExT is good for almost all kind of visual operations, functions, and constants, including a number of geometric, arithmetic, trigonometric, and logical functions. Prepared by a the GEONExT Group, from the University of Bayreuth (Germany), this is a tool that all students and teachers involved in Maths should take a look at.
Comments (1)