NCTM has published a book series co-authored by some of the world's leading fractal researchers along with regular home-grown classroom teachers. It is entitled Fractals for the Classroom, by Peitgen, Jürgens, and Saupe. The companion books for classroom use are called Fractals for the Classroom, Strategic Activities, by Peitgen, Jürgens, Saupe, Maletsky, Perciante, and Yunker. The strategic activities volumes are well-suited for the secondary classroom, and many of the activities could be brought to the middle school/junior high level. The base books are intended for teacher reference and resource. The strategic activities may be copied and used in the classroom without fear of copyright infringement. One copy of each volume is all you need.
Richard Parris, of Phillips Exeter Academy, has written a series of mathematics programs coming under the title PEANUTS. The program called FEEDBACK is well-suited for use in the fractal classroom. I hope to have it uploaded to AOL as soon as possible. FEEDBACK is a many-faceted program which can explore the Mandelbrot/Julia sets, create other fractal images through IFS or collage methods, or simply explore many of the topics related to fractals, chaos, and dynamics. You are able to dump your images to a printer for a hard copy through the program. The program is networkable on ICLAS networks, and it is free. Make sure you include the video drivers in your directory. It is freeware.
Two other programs, FRACTINT and WINFRACT deserve mention. These are the most famous freeware programs in existence(author quote--"Don't want money. Got money. Want admiration"). However, they are HUGE! FRACTINT for DOS is networkable on ICLAS networks. I believe its latest incarnation is version 17.2. WINFRACT is part of a book (to be/which is) published by the Waite Group entitled Fractals for Windows, by the Stone Soup Group(Bert Tyler, et. al.). Presently, the software program is available as version 17.3B, a beta-version. It works great! Either of these two programs are good for exploration, and creating fractal graphics for tests and worksheets. Graphics images are saved in the GIF format. All you need is a file conversion utility such as WINGIF to convert the graphics images to BMP format for inclusion with your Windows applications, or, in DOS, print out the image straight from FRACTINT(scissors & tape time!).
