DIDACTIC APPS TO LEARN GEOMETRY

The new technologies are revolutionizing all the areas of our lifes and have had an important impact on the learning methods of all the school matters. There are IT tools to learn geometry in a different way. These applications  can be downloaded in the mobile phone, so it is available for the majority of the population.

The first application that I have analyzed is 'Geometría'. This instrument calculates the area and the perimeter of all the plane figures and the volume of the geometric shapes too. In addition, he calculates diagonals, diameters… Only the user has to write the data and the program calculates it automatically, detailing every step up to verifying the final number. In my opinion it is a high quality application.

The second one is 'Pythagorea'. This application (in English) consists of twenty-six types of geometric contents (trapezoids, parallels, circles, rectangles…), and in each of them there are several minigames that the user must carry out. For example in the section ‘isosceles triangles’, one of the games is "constructing an isosceles triangle whose vertices are three of the given points”. On the screen there are several points and the player has to guess which points must be used to build the triangle. The minigames increases its difficulty when the easiest are completed. I have very good opinion about this application, I think it is entertaining and very rewarding to learn geometry.

Finally, I discovered 'Figuras geométricas', but it is the less elaborated application of the three I have been talking about. For using this one, the user has to guess types of triangles, the degrees of a polygon, elements of the circle… seeing the image on the screen. The application provides the letters and numbers of the response in a disperse way. Although it seems to be less valuable than the previous ones, also it is effective to know the variety of plane figures, to remember formulae...

Definitively, phones offer us new ways of learning geometry, to use them at any time and place.