Using Geogebra applets in text

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Inserting a static GeoGebra applet
​Inserting a dynamic GeoGebra applet

An example of an exercise with a GeoGebra applet is the following:

These applets can be added to exercises of all types, in theory pages and in slideshows. In the example above, a GeoGebra applet is used in an exercise of the type Open.

We distinguish between two types of applets, namely dynamic applets:

Dynamic applets are applets that depend on the Variables of an exercise and can thus only be used in exercises. For example, if the coefficients of the function f(x) from the example above are variable, we want the GeoGebra applet to change accordingly. This can be done using a dynamic GeoGebra applet.

Static applets can be used in exercises, theory, and slideshows. When used in an exercise, they are not dependent on the Variables of an exercise. The applet can still include GeoGebra sliders or any other moving elements, contrary to what the name ‘static’ might suggest.

Inserting a static GeoGebra applet

We first need to make the GeoGebra applet on the GeoGebra website. You will need a (free) account on the website to do so. This article does not explain how to make GeoGebra applets. For an introduction to GeoGebra, we refer to any tutorial that you can find using your search engine.

The applet from the example above looks as follows:

On the left, we see the Algebra sidebar with the definition of the function and the label. We need to close all sidebars and then save the applet in order to use it in Sowiso. A sidebar can be closed by clicking on the three dots and then clicking “Close”.

Your applet now looks like this:

Next, we save the image by clicking on the hamburger icon in the upper right corner and then clicking “Save”.

The URL of the website that has your applet will look something like this:

or

We will need the code at the end of the URL (so xxzq8kwq in this case) later, as this is the “material id” of the applet.

Next, we open the exercise, theory page, or slideshow in which we want to insert the applet. In this article, we will be inserting our applet in the question text of an exercise.

In the text editor menu, we click on “Insert” -> “GeoGebra”

An additional menu will pop up:

In the field “material id”, we fill in the code that we got from the GeoGebra URL, as was mentioned above. For now, we click “Ok” and “Save”, and we see that the applet is inserted in the text. We will explain all options in this menu later.

When we view the exercise, the applet will look something like this:

To make the applet appear nicer, we need to change some of the options in the “Insert GeoGebra applet” menu. To open it again, go back to the edit page of the exercise, right-click on the applet, and select “GeoGebra”.

Below, the relevant options in the menu are explained:

• “material id”: the code that we got from the URL of the applet on the GeoGebra website. This field cannot be empty.

• “geogebra width/height”: the width/height of the applet as it appears on the screen for the student. The maximum width is approximately 800, so the default 350x350 should be sufficient in most cases.

• “center on page”: check this box to make the applet appear centred on the page. In the example above, this box is checked.

• “disable all user interaction with the applet”: check this box if you don’t want to let students interact with the applet. If you do allow interaction (for example zooming in), you can check any of the “show/enable …” boxes. In the example above, the box “disable all user interaction” is checked and the others are not.

“commands”: in this box, we type ZoomIn[x_min, y_min, x_max, y_max] where we specify the coordinates that should be displayed to the student. For the parabola of our example above, we choose ZoomIn[-4,-4,4,6]. Note that the graph is stretched out vertically since we chose the applet to be a square (namely 350x350) and the coordinates we display are not square (-4 to 4 on the x-axis and -4 to 6 on the y-axis).

After making changes, click “Ok” and “Save”. The applet now looks like this:

It may happen that any labels that you added to your applet on the GeoGebra website (partially) fall off the screen, like this:

To solve this, we need to change the position of the label on the GeoGebra website and save the applet on the GeoGebra website again. Note that we need to save the applet under the same filename. If we change the filename of the applet, the code in the URL will change, and thus we need to change this code in the “material id” field of the GeoGebra menu.

You may need a few iterations of moving labels around until your applet looks good. After making changes to an applet on the GeoGebra website, we need to refresh the preview of the exercise (or theory page or slideshow) to see those changes.

Inserting a dynamic GeoGebra applet

To insert a dynamic GeoGebra applet, we follow roughly the same steps as in the static version. We start with making the applet on the GeoGebra website. Make sure that all numbers that are variable in the Sowiso exercise are also variable numbers in the GeoGebra applet. For example, in this applet, the numbers a and b are variable:

Don’t forget to close the Algebra sidebar and save the applet, as mentioned above in the explanation about static applets. Next, we finish the steps in the explanation about static applets, so we have a nice-looking static applet.

The last step is to link the variables in the Variables tab of the exercise to the variable numbers in the GeoGebra applet. Let’s say we have two variables $a and $b that should be linked to GeoGebra numbers a and b respectively.

To do this, go to the GeoGebra menu and write the following lines in the “commands” field:

Note that the Sowiso variables and the GeoGebra numbers don’t need to have the same name. If we click “Ok” and “Save”, the applet that was static before will now change according to the values of variables $a and $b.

Note: you may use Sowiso variables in the ZoomIn[x_min, y_min, x_max, y_max] function.