Tinkercad

Tinkercad is an application that I found by chance but I was really impressed and liked it after some testing.  It has tools for creating simple designs from scratch to quickly modifying existing designs. Also, It is a free online 3D design program that you can use in your web browser without downloading any software.  Math teachers can use this application for free in their lessons while teaching 3D shapes. You can sign the app from https://www.tinkercad.com/learn/ 
The app facilitates producing new shapes such as robots, homes, and whatever you want. While producing you can look at them from different sides such as the back, above, right, left, or inside, it is up to you.
The interface is easy to understand and use. Custom Shape Scripts add more flexible tools like text, shape generators, and parametrized forms. You can cut things into parts, add simple features, make holes, and combine, align, and arrange objects. If you make your designs public then other people can open their own copies of your models and you can also follow educators and students from your personal account.

Tinkercad allows users basic training after they create their own account. Also, it includes teach and learn buttons which means you can teach your students with this app. If you still have problems with using Tinkercad, you can follow the youtube training videos about tools and producing basic shapes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdqT5MyMzik .

I think Tinkercad is very useful for teaching 3D shapes. It has a colorful and simple interface that may attract students' attention. You don't need to create basic shapes, they are available on the tools bar. Therefore, students can construct their own shapes and share them. This really improves their learning and spatial visualization. 

 

You can give projects like constructing your dream item (house, car, clothe, computer) and draw it from different perspectives. Also, you can connect this app and activity with the ratio subject. Maybe you can give them a determined scale and want them to construct according to this scale. To do this they should measure real sizes of items and also use the measure tool on Tinkercad to take their ratios.

Another good feature of tinkercad that can be used for lessons is making simulations. You can create different types of simulations with Tinkercad as shown in belove.

Gimp and Pdf Exchange Viewer

Hello All,
I want to introduce you Pdf Exchange Viewer and Gimp programs. The idea of offering these two programs came to my mind when I tried to take screenshots of two pdf pages and tried to get only small piece of these pages. Many people do it with Paint and it takes time and effort as you know. However, with these two programs, it only takes 30 seconds.

For example, I have this math test and I just want to get only 8th question of this test.

,
Firstly, move the pdf file into the pdf exchange viewer, and select the screenshot tool which is in the middle of the tools bar and drag the mouse on the question which you want and select it totally
.

After that, you can send the selected piece by e-mail just one click on the tools bar also, you can print out and scan your selected object but what  would yo do, if you want to save it in the format of png file? Gimp is the second program that can help you. Open it and follow these steps
-choose files
-select create from screen
-click to export the image as tool

This is Gimp interface and it is really easy to use, you can play with image with menu bar above as you see. After saving (from files) your document as png format just like shown in below you have what you want as an image.

There are also easy ways of having image format of your screen such as screenshot tool in microsoft word that I used to prepare this page. These are not big programs or tools but they are really life saving and useful for teachers.