In this weird pandemic school year, I'm doubly interested in technology integration to help my virtual (high school) students as much as my in-person students. I've been particularly eager to get that working with compass-and-straightedge constructions. Obviously, students need a little familiarity with holding a compass and making accurate markings without injuring themselves, but learning and practicing the steps of the necessary constructions could be more convenient with virtual tools instead of real ones.
My problem is that I really don't like how Geogebra and other tools (like IXL and Euclidea) manage constructions. There are two main drawbacks that I can identify. The first is that they all use compasses to make circles instead of arcs. For instance, here is the traditional look of a successful angle bisection versus the same construction where full circles are drawn. Frankly, I find it barely recognizable.
The second flaw is that the "rusty compass" style of setting a compass size and then drawing a number of arcs with that radius is not native to the apps. Rather, the "compass" setting on all of these tools require you to set a radius (via two points or a line segment) for each circle drawn. Both of these drawbacks keep Geogebra, IXL, and Euclidea from effectively simulating what a real-world compass-and-straightedge construction looks and feels like.
Does anyone know of an online tool that would do a better job? I'm imagine an interface where the compass operations would be changing the radius and making a circle. The latter would have you pick the center, draw a faint complete circle, let you choose the arc(s) of the circle you wanted, and then erase the complete circle when you were done. I seem to recall that the Smart Board construction interface is somewhere along these lines, but I'm looking for a sandbox that students can play with on their chromebooks or smart phones.
