I put this page together to provide a list of links and resources for the session I'll be leading at the October 2010 Laptop Conference in The Hague. Participants can follow along with their laptops. Enjoy!

 

Many math teachers already use Geogebra. It's awesome, and free, and easy to use, but you can do really advanced stuff with it. The feature that you might have overlooked is the Export Dynamic Worksheet as HTML, which lets you create interactive Geogebra files that you can upload to the internet. Here's one exploring slope-intercept form.

 

Gapminder is great for humanities class, but it's really great for math as well. Did you know you can export any of the data files and analyze them in a different program? Students can find an interesting correlation, download the data, then run various statistical analyses on them. It's a great way to teach postive and negative correlation. And you can download a desktop version in case your internet is slow or unreliable.

 

I love the amazing data displays you can create with ManyEyes, a free web-based visualization tool. It's also something of a social network; you can leave comments and embed snapshots of graphs that you re-mash. Here's one I made with fairly mundane data. Here's a nifty visualization called a treemap.

 

My very favorite software program for learning is TinkerPlots, from Key Curriculum Press. It lets students interact with data in an exploratory, hands-on way.

 

Lots of us use Smart Notebook, and it's great in math class. Two of the lesser-known features are Page Recording and Smart Recorder. They're great for math!

 

Some schools block Wolfram Alpha, since they think having students use it is like cheating. We used to keep kids from using calculators, too. I think Wolfram Alpha is awesome!

 

And it might not be a great tool for the classroom, but you should be aware of Cramster, because your students probably are. Those even-numbered answers aren't a secret any longer!