Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Software Review #1
Software Review, 1 of 2
Bill Zawacki
Ed 436 Technology Across the Curriculum
November 26, 2004
Software Title: Kseg and Geometer’s SketchpadAcquisition Information: Kseg can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.mit.edu/~ibaran/kseg.html. Visit http://www.keypress.com/sketchpad/evaluation to download theEvaluation Edition of Sketchpad.
Requirements: Kseg was developed, and supposedly runs under Unix. There is a windows version available but it is not practical to use for the average non-technical person.
Weaknesses: Kseg. A person of moderate technical experience can’t get the Windows version to execute in a reasonable amount of time. Geometer’s Sketch Pad. The demo version has too many pieces missing to be of much use.
Strengths: Kseg. It’s free. Geometer’s Sketchpad. The purchased version probably does work, otherwise they probably couldn’t afford to keep marketing it.
Uses: You can spend a lot of time trying to get this software to work. You need to do this up front, in order to avoid wasting valuable classroom time. I’m not sure it is an effective use teachers’ time to individually and repeatedly trip over the difficulties in getting this stuff ready for classroom use. It would probably be worthwhile to see if you could interest a group of teachers in finding and developing for classroom use, tools like these. Then all teachers could use the lesson plans developed for the group. Teachers and students should spend their time doing geometry during the time allocated for math, not playing around trying to figure out how to get the software to load, open, unzip, or work in any kind of limited way. Several books on the use of and uses for Geometer’s Sketchpad are available at Amazon.com.
Bill Zawacki
Ed 436 Technology Across the Curriculum
November 26, 2004
Software Title: Kseg and Geometer’s SketchpadAcquisition Information: Kseg can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.mit.edu/~ibaran/kseg.html. Visit http://www.keypress.com/sketchpad/evaluation to download theEvaluation Edition of Sketchpad.
Requirements: Kseg was developed, and supposedly runs under Unix. There is a windows version available but it is not practical to use for the average non-technical person.
Weaknesses: Kseg. A person of moderate technical experience can’t get the Windows version to execute in a reasonable amount of time. Geometer’s Sketch Pad. The demo version has too many pieces missing to be of much use.
Strengths: Kseg. It’s free. Geometer’s Sketchpad. The purchased version probably does work, otherwise they probably couldn’t afford to keep marketing it.
Uses: You can spend a lot of time trying to get this software to work. You need to do this up front, in order to avoid wasting valuable classroom time. I’m not sure it is an effective use teachers’ time to individually and repeatedly trip over the difficulties in getting this stuff ready for classroom use. It would probably be worthwhile to see if you could interest a group of teachers in finding and developing for classroom use, tools like these. Then all teachers could use the lesson plans developed for the group. Teachers and students should spend their time doing geometry during the time allocated for math, not playing around trying to figure out how to get the software to load, open, unzip, or work in any kind of limited way. Several books on the use of and uses for Geometer’s Sketchpad are available at Amazon.com.
# posted by BillZ @ 1:12 PM 
