Equatio is a program that is setting Teacher Twitter ablaze. It works on top of several different programs and browsers to allow you to do math on the computer. Unlike many other things on the market, the user still has to do the thinking and the work. It doesn’t do the math for you.
I was exposed to Equatio at the beginning of the year as part of my new job, Itinerant Teacher of Assistive Technology (ITAT). The ITAT team was looking for something to support students in STEM. We found Equatio and fell in love.
I have taught math for almost all of my career, and using the computer to prepare resources has always been difficult. I have become very adept at using superscript and inserting special characters. No student, even those who use a computer for all other work, has done their math on a computer in my 20 years of teaching. Equatio has the possibility of changing all of that.
With Equatio you can easily type math expressions and equations. The program allows you to type the name of an operation or other math symbols and insert it as an image. For example, typing “sq” brings up a menu with squared. Clicking on that inserts a 2 as an exponent. “Times” brings you a multiplication symbol and so on. You can also dictate your math, which blows my mind. Saying “open bracket, negative 7 plus 8, close bracket” brings you “(-7 + 8)”. If you have a touchscreen, you can even hand write math. Let me repeat, the computer turns my chicken scribbles into readable math. The program even has a mobile interface that gives you access to a touchscreen and mic if you don’t have one on your computer by using the touchscreen and built-in mic. The mobile interface will also allow you to take a picture of math, be it handwritten or typed, and add that to your document.
All of this math is turned into an image that is not only editable but can also be inserted into many G Suite products. (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drawings). This means that math is as easy to do with a computer as language is now. And as a math teacher, that is really exciting.
I hope you take a minute to check it out. Or at least check out the resources on Equatio I have prepared below.