Final Reflections
GeoGebra
Personally, I think that there are endless possibilities when it comes to working with GeoGebra. Teachers can use it in a wide variety of settings and the way it is used is easy and works seamlessly. There are many options that are readily available that can help benefit students and teachers. I think that this program is very easy to use for students so that keeps the doors open for a wide variety of ages. One can use this technology for basic constructions, or they can use this for very complicated 3-D object constructions. Overall, this fit the curriculum in all aspects the most and was the easiest to use and I would definitely use this in my classroom.
nspire
To me, I found that the nspire calculator was more like a miniature computer. I liked the way that it had options of what you wanted to do rather than just a calculator and a graph like most other calculators. The options on this are endless. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the class settings and how you can incorporate the entire class into the problem at the same time. It was easy to send documents and quizzes to the students and straightforward to navigate. I think that the only downfall is the price. Depending on the school, I think that having a class set of the nspire calculators would benefit the class, but if they do not own it, will they really be able to learn and use it on the diploma or final exams. I enjoyed learning about the different activities that are possible with the nspire but I think it is too expensive to have my students buy it for my class.
Desmos
Desmos impressed me when I saw how one can use functions to create a landscape. I thought that the program was limited until I saw what it could do with the functions in the program. I liked how you could easily add sliders for the variables and it was easy to access it. Personally, I would use this in my class to introduce different functions to them because it is easy to play around with the sliders and see what happens. I think that it is a bit limited because that is the only thing that one can do with it. But for what it can do, it does it well.
Fathom
I personally loved working with Fathom. I found it easy to understand and follow through adding data and creating tables or graphs with it. It definitely links to various aspects of secondary curriculum which makes it a valuable program. I think that the statistics part of different curriculum levels are perfectly made for this program. Using it to extrapolate data from a graph and find a line of best fit especially benefits the program. Also, using the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, etc aspects of the program makes it extremely valuable for students to learn and fully understand what happens when the points on a graph change regarding mean, median, mode, etc. I think that this is one of my favorite technologies that we learned just because it is easy to use and it covers a wide variety of curriculum outcomes.
Excel
When I think of Excel, I think of a boring program that is used to organize data. When we were introduced to the problem of "How lucky is the number 7?" with regards to rolling two die, I found it a lot more interesting. I had no idea the functions that I could work with when calculating what I wanted to. I like how it tells you what each function means and what you have to put in there to make it work. It is easy to follow but sometimes things are hidden within the tool bars that sometimes can be frustrating. Overall though, I think that Excel is a great tool for statistics and data. I would have everything pre-made or easy to follow instructions if I was going to use it in a class though so that everybody can follow along and to prevent students from getting lost in the different functions and tools.
Entire Course
I feel like I have gained important knowledge when it comes to mathematics and technology. I found that each program was beneficial for some sort of curriculum and there was a wide variety of things to do in each. I am more educated and comfortable with these programs so I will be using them in my future classrooms. I liked the discovery learning aspect of the course because I could find cool and interesting things on my own. Overall, I feel like I have a good grasp on how to investigate the different technologies we have used throughout the course and am able to use them alongside the curriculum to teach students so they understand.