GeoGebra Classroom: Students Make Constructions

I am digging teaching with with GeoGebra this year. In my quest to start a lesson by having students do the thinking I wanted to use GeoGebra classroom to have students construct a Chord, Central Angle, and Inscribed Angle. However, I had a failure in setting up the activity. My buddy Tim Brzezinski is the master at GeoGebra and he was kind enough to help me with what I did wrong.

GeoGebra

Be sure to sign into GeoGebra to get started. Click on “Sign in” in the upper right. GeoGebra is a digital math platform that allows students to explore math concepts.

GeoGebra Classroom

GeoGebra Classroom allows you to take a GeoGebra ACTIVITY and share it with students so you can tile all of their work. I can see all students work on a solution at the same time. GeoGebra Classroom should really be called “GeoGebra Live Session” It’s a single activity shared with your class not a collection of assignments to create a class.

Remote Learning Whiteboards Activity

As stated you need a GeoGebra activity to create a GeoGebra Classroom live session. Check out “Resources” on the left hand side of GeoGebra and select “Remote Learning Templates.”

Scroll down to find “Virtual whiteboards and apps.” You can try one of the blank whiteboards. However, for what I was trying to do with my students I needed the “Classic” template.

Notice in the animation that the Classic whiteboard has GeoGebra graphing calculator capabilities along with an integration of GeoGebra Notes.

Create Class

In the upper right of the activity click on “Create class.” This is just a live session of this activity. After creating class you’ll be given a code you can share with students. I click the copy icon and paste into the Stream of Google Classroom so students can easily join.

Students Join

As students join the live session you can see a tile for each student as well as a thumbnail of what they are working on. The refresh rate is pretty decent that I do not necessarily have to click on a student tile to see their work, although that definitely comes in handy too!

What you can see from this example is that the students are making the constructions in the GeoGebra calculator. I had failed at having students have the ability to do this. Tim points me first to this pre made activity under resources since it already has the correct settings.

My Own Activity

The premade activities are very cool. Definitely a good option. However, I wanted to make my own. I start at the home page and click on “Profile” on the left hand side. This gives me an opportunity to “Create” an Activity.

GeoGebra Applet

On the activity creator I choose “GeoGebra” to add an editable calculator for students.

Create Applet

Choose “Create Applet,” or you can find one already created by someone else.

Select Graphing.

Right click on the graph to turn off “Axes” and “Grid” if you’re trying to create Geometry constructions.

Customize the Toolbar

In the upper right click on the 3 lines menu and click on “Tools” and select “Customize Toolbar.” This allows you to get rid of the tool options such as “reflect across a line” if you’re not going to be using that tool.

Click DONE

Be sure to click on the Done button in the bottom right.

Advanced Settings

Click on “Advanced Settings” and select “Show Toolbar.” Make sure the GeoGebra App being displayed is “GeoGebra Classic.”

Click Done.

Save and Close

Click on “Save and Close” and go back to your profile on the main page to find the activity. This should allow students to make constructions within the applet. You can then “Create class” on the activity that you created and see all students making their constructions in live time in a grid.