I previously mentioned that I have Winplot on my computer – the absolutely amazing Windows graphing software written by Rick Parris, a math teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy. This software (and several others he wrote) is available free through the link I placed on Winplot. The one thing I have struggled with is that I would like all my students to have access to this amazing tool, but many of my students have Macs at home. Rick, for many good reasons, only writes his software for Windows machines and up until this point I assumed that the only way to get it to run on a Mac was a rather laborious or expensive process.
A couple weeks ago a teacher on the AP Calculus Electronic Discussion Group posted a link to a site that has a relatively quick method for setting up Winplot to use on a Mac using Mac OS X Leopard. Upon clicking through the link I was amazed to see that the site was for none other than a student at my school! He had done this for his fellow students in his Algebra 2 class and shared the link with them. Click here to go to the site.
On a side note, what this shows is the disconnectedness of technology use in our department. What should have been trumpeted throughout the department remained unnoticed until a teacher from outside the school directed me to it. As chair I need to work on this. Our teachers and students are doing good things with technology, but it can only help us all if we share.
26 August 2009 at 5:19 am |
As an AP Calculus teacher and devoted Mac user myself, I highly recommend Grapher, a free but relatively unknown graphing program that comes built-in with every Mac — all of your Mac-using students already have this program, whether they know it or not. It’s located in the Utilities folder, which is itself located in the Applications folder.
Try it out! It’s both very simple and remarkably powerful. I’ve been using it for years to develop lessons, demonstrations, and animations for class. Feel free to get in touch with me (abasson at polyprep dot org) if you have any questions.
26 August 2009 at 7:10 am |
Alex, thanks for bringing that up! I am familiar with Grapher and have used it a bit myself. However, for now at least, I am a PC user, and it would be easier if the program I use in class would be accessible to all students. This is why I posted about this trick for using Winplot on the Mac.
This summer I taught a calculus class to two students, both of whom had Macs. I did not know of the above at that point so I know at least one of them was using Grapher on his Mac. Maybe when I switch to a Mac (which is what I have told my school I want for my next computer) I will use Grapher more often.
That all being said, though, Winplot is still a remarkably powerful little program and well worth taking a look at.