geogebra-na2010

July 27-28: aa Conference Schedule

 * [[image:dani_novak.jpg width="192" height="144"]] || Hello. I am Dani Novak. I am a professor in the Mathematics Department at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, USA and chair of GeoGebra-NA2010. I want to welcome you all and wish you a very excellent experience at our Conference.

When I visited the first ever GeoGebra conference in Linz, Austria last year, there was a homey atmosphere of unity and openness that seemed to be generated by the nature of GeoGebra itself. As the saying goes “like attracts like”. We want to foster and encourage the same feeling here in Ithaca at GeoGebra-NA2010 and hope that there will be many opportunities for folks to get together informally, establish new connections and work towards to common goal of transforming math education around the world. I believe that we all share the love for math and find GeoGebra with its dynamic and interactive capabilities as one of the most useful tools to achieve this goal.

Both before and after the conference we will continue to update this wiki with the intention of making it a living expression of our collaborative experiences here. I ask that all of you contribute to this process. Please join us here.

We will have information about Ithaca and Ithaca College. Ithaca is a most beautiful small city on the shores of Cayuga Lake which is part of the lovely Finger Lakes region of New York State. It has many gorges, waterfalls and parks, two of which are within walking distance from Ithaca College. Ithaca College itself has a lovely campus and an outdoor pool where you will also be able to swim and relax as you like. Here is a link with suggestions for hikes and activities.

One of the unique features of our conference is having three of the major developers of GeoGebra come and share their expertise. Mike Borcherds from England, George Sturr from the USA and Yves Kreis from Luxemburg will be here. We also have 2 other distinguished plenary speakers, Pamela Buffington and Maurice Burke.

Two ways by which learning and experiencing mathematics can be improved is through:
 * 1) Empowering teachers
 * 2) Transformation of textbooks

We hope that the many teachers who come to this conference will become leaders and train other teachers to become leaders so that this positive creative energy expands. Mike May together with Mary Ann Huntley will be leading a work group that will work find ways to transform text books in the same spirit as GeoGebra is helping our teaching transform. Maria Droujkova will be leading a work group that will help us to build and sustain our community so that this process will continue after the conference ends.

Again, I wish you welcome to all participants of GeoGebra-NA2010

-- Dr. Dani Novak Math Department Ithaca College, Ithaca NY 14850 USA novak@ithaca.edu @http://www.ithaca.edu/dani ||