GeometryEditor: An SVG Based Tool for Plane Geometry and Mathematics Education

Overview of GeometryEditor and GeoSite

Geometry is an important part of mathematics. A Web-based authoring tool, GeometryEditor (formerly GeoSVG), that makes creating interactive geometry and other mathematics lessons simple has been developed. GeoSite is a website that supports publishing manipulatives authored using GeometryEditor. Teachers and other experts can easily create and share interoperable geometry-based experiments to illustrate mathematical concepts. GeometryEditor and GeoSite combine to provide a complete authoring, teaching, and learning environment with plane geometry manipulatives.

GeometryEditor Architecture and Components

• The GeometryEditor toolkit---an SVG-coded library for authoring (creating, editing, publishing plane geometry manipulatives and for their display, animation, and user interaction).
• The GeoSite---a Web site that makes the GeometryEditor toolkit available and stores manipulatives for access, searhing, and sharing.

A GeoSite provides the functions for GeometryEditor system access, manipulatives access, file storing, manipulative sharing and searching, and management of user accounts. With a Web browser, a user can author, test, configure, and publish manipulatives via HTTP communication with GeoSite (the right bi-direction arrow in the Figure). Users who only do interactive learning (the left bi-direction arrow in the Figure) can access manipulatives by visiting GeoSite directly or a Web page that links to a manipulative stored on a GeoSite or any other website. WME lesson pages are examples that use the latter technique which makes GeoSite completely transparent to visitors.