Key Math Education Software Bundle
Neal F. Grandgenett · Mathematics and computer education · 2005
KEY MATH EDUCATION SOFTWARE BUNDLE Key College Publishing 1150 65th Street Emeryville, CA 94608 Website: http://www.keycollege.com, Phone: (888) 877-7240 Price: $49.95 In the world of computer technology and software, things evolve quickly and sometimes it's difficult to keep up with it all. However, one of the nice things about this fast pace of technological change is that even successful software packages often decrease in price over a period of time, providing outstanding software at a very good price. An example is the recent educational discounting of the mathematics software bundle from Key College Publishing. It contains three products that were successful in their own right: The Geometer's Sketchpad, Fathom Dynamic Statistics, and KaleidoMania Interactive Symmetry. These are now being packaged as a single student-oriented educational product for $49.95. These three individual packages have been around for some time, and have each won software awards from several educational review groups. Because they've been around for awhile, they're compatible with older machines. This software bundle runs on Macintosh System 8 or higher machines and Windows 95 or higher machines, and needs about 16 MB of RAM. The showcase product of this bundle is The Geometer's Sketchpad, which historically has been a successful software package for education. It's still relevant and powerful. The Sketchpad, as it is often called, is a dynamic geometric exploration tool where a user can build, modify, and experiment with geometric constructions on the screen. The program is very user-friendly, with intuitive pull-down menus and tool bars. Some constructions or figures can also be animated, to help examine geometric relationships by putting the figures into motion or by trying various iterations with systematic sets of values. Students can annotate their developed constructions using various text tools. They can also add pictures, animations, and dynamic links to webpages within their constructions. Similarly, developed constructions can also be copied and pasted as images into other documents (such as MSWord documents). Quite a few suggested activity ideas are available in a Samples Folder, which includes ideas supporting algebra, trigonometry, precalculus, and calculus instruction. There are also a number of additional instructional ideas at the online Sketchpad Resource Center (http://www.keypress.com/sketchpad/). The second most popular package of the bundle is the Fathom Dynamic Statistics Student Edition. This statistics package has also been relatively successful in Key College's individual marketing. Originally designed within a National Science Foundation-funded initiative, it is relatively intuitive. …