Math Live is an amazing website for mathematics teacher. It is produced by the Ministry of Education of Alberta. It is all produced in Flash so it will not run on many mobile devices such as the iPod touch, iPhone or iPad. When you start Math Live, there is an intro video presenting the four characters. It is possible to skip this intro and go directly to the lessons and the glossary. Lessons are available in the four main strands of mathematics in Alberta : Number, Patterns and Relations, Shape and Space and Statistics and Probability. Lessons include concepts such as place value, proper fractions, equivalent fractions, multiplication and divisions of decimals, patterns, area, perimeter, volume, polygons, tessellation, displaying data and probability. The lessons are visually attractive and presented in a fun way by the characters. All the lessons also include parent notes, teacher notes and assessments.
Archive for the Category ◊ Mathematics ◊
There is a great Worksheet Generator about “Place Value and Scientific Notation” on the Home School Math website. The great thing about this generator is that you can get an unlimited number of different worksheets. You can also customize it easily including the level of difficulty. You can either choose Easy (up to 5 nonzero digits) or Medium (no limitation). There are many types of problems you can include on your worksheet such as writing a number in expanded form, writing a number in normal form, writing a number in scientific notation, and converting a number from scientific notation to a normal form. You can also control the maximum number of digits and the maximum number of decimal digits. You can also control the look of the numbers by selecting the symbol used for multiplications, the decimal separator and the thousands separator. It is also possible to choose the font, font size and cell padding. It is a great resource for homeschoolers as well as science and mathematic teachers. Finally you can also print an answer key.
The following list of math and science tools include resources for homework help, keeping up with research and news in the field, and reviewing basic concepts and applications. You can share them with your students as lesson plans or extra test prep, and bookmark them yourself when you want to improve your own math and science knowledge.
- Math Sciences and Resources: This toolset from NASA includes proficiency tests, physics questions and more educational materials for K-12 students and teachers.
- MIT OpenCourseWare: If you’re not already using the free course materials, lecture notes, videos and audio features supplied by MIT through its opencourseware program, you’re missing out. The web resource includes materials for all subjects, but is especially rich in math and the sciences, from engineering to health sciences to technology to chemistry and more.
- Texas Instruments Free Downloads: Texas Instruments’ collection of free downloads provides you and your students with review tools and games at all levels. Find apps and computer software, games, and more, for all different operating systems.
- ACT Test Prep: You don’t have to be training students for the ACT to use all the practice questions on this site. It includes math and science review for anyone at the high school level.
- Math.com: This mathematics website features a homework help page, practice page, games, and collection of calculators and tools. You can use the math worksheet generator to customize review sheets for your students or for yourself, in pre-algebra, algebra, everyday math, advanced math, calculus, and more.
- ScienceDaily: Visit this authoritative website for research news in the sciences and in mathematics. You can watch and share videos, read articles, view images, and learn about math and science books, experiments, researchers and technology.
- MathDL: The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Mathematical Sciences Digital Library offers the public all kinds of resources for learning about math in the news, subscribing to RSS feeds, collecting library resources, discussing math topics with other community members, and more.
- Scientific American: The web version of this prestigious science journal includes blogs, features, letters to the editor, news stories, special in-depth reports, image gallery, videos, a “fact or fiction” feature, and other resources for you and your students. Science topics covered range from basic science to space to evolution to the mind and brain to energy and sustainability, and others.
- Free Online Textbooks, Lecture Notes, Tutorials, and Videos on Mathematics: This page from NYU lists free online resources for studying math, including textbooks, software, lecture notes and more, dealing with numerical analysis, calculus, number theory, statistics and general mathematics.
- Discovery: The Discovery Channel’s website is a huge resource for anyone interested in learning more about math and science, from technology to the natural world. There are also lots of games and interactive features that will help students learn about animals, NASA, evolution and the environment.
- Jefferson Lab Games and Puzzles: Jefferson Lab’s group of resources includes games and puzzles for understanding math, numbers, science vocabulary, science concepts and more.
- National Geographic: Similar to Discovery.com, the National Geographic website provides teachers and students with a fun, interactive and free opportunity to study the natural world and history. You can watch TV shows online, too.
- Cramster.com: This homework help site has collected thousands of resources for students working on biology, physics, computer science, chemistry, math and engineering, from equation sheets to practice exams to outlines to video lectures.
- Science.gov: This government-sponsored resource is a searchable site of over 40 databases and 2,000 websites. You can perform an advanced search or browse categories like science education, natural resources, agriculture and food, biology and nature, and beyond.
- Project Euclid: Project Euclid is a collection of math and statistics resources, particularly math journals online from places like the University of Michigan.
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This guest post is contributed by Alvina Lopez, who writes on the topics of accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez@gmail.com.
Charts are an excellent way to present data, but unfortunately many traditional applications used to produce them in the classroom are difficult to use. My students have used Microsoft Excel or Corel QuattroPro in the past to build charts, but unfortunately, these applications have so many features not related with charts that students get totally lost. ChartGo is a solution on the Web that makes the process really easy. It is a very simple web application and it is totally free. The student has to select from one of the four main types of charts (bar chart, line chart, pie chart or area chart). Then he or she can enter a title, labels for the x-axis and y-axis, the data and a few options and voilà. A nice chart is created for the student all in colours. After the chart is created, the student can even change the type of chart or modify the date. The chart is available as a PNG image file, so it can easily be imported in any other application such as a word processor or a website. It even includes a URL to access this chart again from the website and a URL to share the chart with friends.
Is your class excited about the Winter Olympic Games approaching? If you are mathematics, science or physical education teacher, you might want to explain the physics behind all the sports presented at the Winter Olympic Games. NBC has created a video series entitled “Science of the Olympic Winter Games” and Lessonopoly has created student activities and lesson plans to support that video series. By completing these activities with your students, they will learn about friction, movement, momentum, center of gravity, chemistry of material and many more. The activities are aimed at students grade 6 to 9. Some of the subjects include : Aerial Skiing, Slapshot Physics, Cross-Country Skiing, Competition Suits, The Science of Skis, The Science of Skates, Science of Friction in Curling and many more. What a great way to get athletic students more interested in science.
If you are looking for a very large collection of on-line education games, Primary Games Arena has to be one of the largest I have ever seen. It is a compilation of hundreds of Flash based education games about Math, English, Science, Physical Education, Music, Spanish, German, French, Religion Education, ICT, History, Geography, Art and Design, Citizenship and Technology. All the games are also sorted by grade levels (based on the UK educational system) or game types. The games are not necessarily hosted by the Primary Games Arena, but they link to only kids-appropriate games. The API let game developers feed scores from their games straight onto Primary Games Arena. I strongly recommend this site if your students need to learn while playing.
If you are looking for a very inspirational science teacher, I recommend that you visit Britt Gow’s Technoscience blog. She is a Science and Maths teacher at a small, rural P12 College in southwest Victoria, Australia. Her blog has a large amount of entries all presenting science activities that she has done at her school. It is a great way to find new ideas on how to enhance science learning in your classroom. It includes ideas for Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 in mathematics and science (based on the Australian School system). The subjects are varied and are all good ideas on how to apply scientific principles in context. I think this blog is a gem.
“I know that” is a great site to access fun learning activities about math, the arts, social learning, science, language arts and social studies. It is also possible to access the learning activities by grade (for pre-kindergarten to grade 6). The activities are very visually attractive and user-friendly. To experience the activity, you need to open an account. You can get a free guest limited account that includes advertisement. The advertisements do not seem to target children. By subscribing to a paid account, you can eliminate the ads and have access to many premium member features. With the teacher’s paid account, you can even track the progress of your students. The site also promotes “social learning” by encouraging users to create an avatar and posting about their successes.
Educational Videos dot com is a site devoted to finding you the best educational videos on the web. It includes a collection of videos about arts, science, environment, geology, health, history, language, mathematics, music, psychology, sports and technology. They are only few videos available in each category right now, but the number is growing. Even though the videos are already available on YouTube and they are simply embedded on this website, they are better organized on this website for use by educators. The videos are intended for students of all ages.
This simple activity will help your students learn how to think algebraically with clever weighing scales. The games “Algebraic Reasoning” is available with three levels, level one and two including only two scales and level three including three scales. By using the information available, they have to determine the weight of each item on the scale. This activity would be a great starter to teach students how to solve equations.
Fraction Quiz gives the user randomized questions to answer on simplifying fractions; conversions between fractions, decimals, percents, and percentage problems. There are three possible levels of difficulty and you can even select how much time will be allowed to answer each question : from 10 to 60 seconds or no limit at all.
Countdown is a service offered by the Loyola University Chicago School of Education. It is utilizing the technology of QuickTime movies to develop math skills. Children are calling with questions about mathematics concept. A tutor then explains the concept while prompting the student with questions to better enhance the comprehension of the student. In the videos, you can watch the tutor writing or using manipulative to prompt and question the student. The video looks a bit old and poor quality, but they still convey the message. Nothing in these videos is high tech. It is all paper, pen and manipulative. No fancy video editing and post-production!
There is a considerable amount of videos available in many categories such as number and operations, algebra, measurement, geometry, data analysis and probability, etc. Also each category is further divided in sub-categories: whole numbers, integers, ratio, fractions, decimals, etc. Now here is the best part: each video comes with a PDF worksheet!
Create Fractions is a great exercise for students who are beginning to learn the meaning of a fraction. The web application will show two fractions, a rectangle and a circle. Using a set of two sliders for each fraction, the student must determine how he or she will segment the shape. The student must then select the number of pieces to properly represent the fraction. As the student moves the slider, the graphical representation of the fraction will change. The answer can then be verified and a new exercise can be created.
Purplemath is a collection of short lessons explaining various intermediate and advanced algebra topics. You could send your students to this website to read the content, or you could use the content to develop your own lessons. The notes are simple and straightforward with a few pictures or graphs when necessary. It also contains examples to complement the explanations. Some of the topics include factoring polynomials, numerical approximation of zeroes, binomial theorem, matrix addition and subtraction, solving systems of linear Equations and many more.
Here is a resource that will certainly please the mathematics grade 7, 8 and 9 teachers in Ontario. It is called “Wired Math” and it is published by the University of Waterloo in both English and French. The site offers mathematics activities in the form of backline masters ready to be used in the classroom. The activities correspond to the general and specific expectations of the Ontario Curriculum in mathematics. There are also some games and exercises, teacher’s lesson list and some extra challenges for students who want to enter the Math Contests organized by the University of Waterloo. The website is a great resource to provide you with some activities to complement the ones already in the textbook used in your classroom. Obviously, teachers outside of Ontario can also use the content and the targets are students age 12-16.
