This resource is your online partner for teaching the core curriculum:
English, history, science, mathematics, Spanish
Learner-centered tools, lessons, and resources with measurable outcomes
Interactive components that foster higher-order thinking skills
Twenty-first century skills integrated into content
"supports middle grades educators with high-quality, standards-based resources and promotes collaboration and knowledge-sharing among its users. Educators use MSP2 to increase content knowledge in science, mathematics, and appropriate pedagogy for youth ages 10 to 15. MSP2 employs social networking and digital tools to foster dynamic experiences that promote creation, modification, and sharing of resources, facilitate professional development, and support the integration of technology into practice."
The value of Twitter for helping you and your colleagues stay informed of the latest trends, ideas, resources, and Web 2.0 integration tools has increased tremendously in the past year.
A Web 2.0 tool is available for exploiting the every growing information on Twitter to remove barriers and allow you to collaborate with other science and math teachers. This new online tool is paper.li - a source of daily Twitter newsletters in education.
"Computing Technology for Math Excellence is devoted to resources for teaching and learning mathematics (K-12 and calculus), technology integration, and the standards movement in education."
Stimulating critical thinking using technology has the potential to create more in depth understanding of science and math content by students when engaged in learning activities which integrate in-class and on-line technology resources.
Technology tools support stimulation of both inquiry-based and critical thinking skills by engaging students in exploring, thinking, reading, writing, researching, inventing, problem-solving, and experiencing the world outside their classroom. This is accomplished through learning content through the lens of video to multimedia to the internet (Using Technology to Improve Student Achievement, NCREL, 2005).
Nice list of resources from around the world, some of the sites are not in English, but most are. Worth looking at as there are a lot of connections to other topics.
"Usually, being able to visualise mathematical concepts to students is an important step in helping them understand techniques to illustrate connections with previous learning, helping them master maths notions to progress their skills. The importance of visualising concepts is clearly integral for Peter Mattock who has collected together a valued resource of mathematical activities that can be used with manipulative across the age and ability range."
I Speak Math is an sidea-filled and informative blog from a math teacher currently at a project-based private school in North Carolina. Posts are updated often and include pictures of classroom projects along with links to resources used. Examples include a kinesthetic box and whisk-ers plot activity, foldables for functions and graphing, and reflections upon students grading their own tests. Explore the site further by viewing top posts through the link on the side bar. Search the site using the search box on the top of the page. Most posts include several tags. Click on a tag to find other posts with the same topic or click on popular tags located in the tag cloud on the side bar.
Abstract: "n this study we explored the impact of performing mathematical tasks presented in the context of an
"adventure challenge" or a "mathematical challenge" in a videogame. This videogame - "Matemáquina
do Tempo" - is being developed to facilitate learning of mathematical skills like counting, grouping,
and relating numbers. The videogame consists in various movement control tasks with dynamic (e.g.,
running) and static (e.g., pointing) interactions. Our goal was to test the impact of the integration of a
direct mathematical task versus an indirect mathematical task. A group of 18 five year-old children
performed the game in two conditions: a)
adventure challenge
, which implied movements such as
running or climbing trees to perform mathematical tasks of counting and grouping; and
b)
mathematical challenge
, which included swimming after selecting the correct path through counting,
followed by a direct mathematical task of pointing to organize numbers in a line. Our assumptions
were evaluated according to questionnaires and video analysis of the children playing the game.
Results confirmed our hypothesis, showing that players performing the mathematical challenge
generally considered that they were learning with the game, and most agreeing that the game was
fun. Participants in the adventure challenge condition on the other hand, showed a tendency to
evaluate the game as
very amusing
and were more distributed in the learning evaluation. In
conclusion, we suggest that the inclusion of direct mathematical tasks in the videogame might lead to
increased perception of learning, although they also seem to result in lower amusement ratings."
Published by University of Chicago Press, July 2012. "Math and science hold powerful places in contemporary society, setting the foundations for entry into some of the most robust and highest-paying industries. However, effective math and science education is not equally available to all students, with some of the poorest students-those who would benefit most-going egregiously underserved. This ongoing problem with education highlights one of the core causes of the widening class gap. While this educational inequality can be attributed to a number of economic and political causes, in Empowering Science and Mathematics Education in Urban Communities, Angela Calabrese Barton and Edna Tan demonstrate that it is augmented by a consistent failure to integrate student history, culture, and social needs into the core curriculum. They argue that teachers and schools should create hybrid third spaces-neither classroom nor home-in which underserved students can merge their personal worlds with those of math and science. A host of examples buttress this argument: schools where these spaces have been instituted now provide students not only an immediate motivation to engage the subjects most critical to their future livelihoods but also the broader math and science literacy necessary for robust societal engagement. A unique look at a frustratingly understudied subject, Empowering Science and Mathematics Education pushes beyond the idea of teaching for social justice and into larger questions of how and why students participate in math and science. " Excerpts in Google Books
The use of web based technology is growing by leaps and bounds every day. These online tools are the new set of keys for opening your students' minds. The vast resources on the Internet are making the use traditional methods of teaching and learning obsolete in countless ways.
Like everything else on the Internet, trying to find images is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Without the right tools for finding science and math images on the web it is often an impossible, or at least mind-numbing, task. What is needed are search engines which make the job easier.
This is where the tips and tricks provided below help this seemingly impossible task by using the top search Web 2.0 search engines and tools available today. These are valuable resources for both you and your students when trying to find just the right image for lesson or project involving digital media.
Abstract: "This research seeks to look into the design process that promotes the development of an educational computer
game that supports teaching and learning processes. The research specifically looks at the design of an educational
computer game for teaching and learning of the topic of functions. The topic is essential in the teaching and
learning of Mathematics courses such as Discrete Mathematics, Real Analysis and Calculus among others at Jomo
Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) Kenya. The computer game was developed using the
Basic Unified process (BUP) which is a streamlined version of the rational unified process (RUP). This is an object
oriented methodology mostly used for small projects with few end users. Due to the few numbers of end users we
used interview method of data collection to gather requirements for the computer game. A paper prototype was
used to validate the requirements. Use cases were used for both analysis and design of the game while Class
diagrams and activity diagrams were purely used for the design of the game. Owens' six top level design anatomy
aided in the design of the computer game. The overall computer game design was based on Crawfords' computer
game design sequence model. The well designed and developed game met all its user requirements and was able
to facilitate the teaching and learning of functions to Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science
students who were taking Discrete mathematics in their first year of study at JKUATs' Taita/Taveta campus.
Development of heuristics for measuring interest, fun and motivation are recommendations given to aid in the
evaluation of user satisfaction of educational computer games."
In contrast to the digital footprint you use for your personal learning network, this focus is on the online digital footprint students' use in your science or math classroom. The power of a well designed digital footprint brings the capacity to transform a classroom into an online learning community. Within this community your students use digital tools to create and develop a personal learning network.
My blog. Contains intuitive explanation of mathematics topics ranges from elementary to undergraduate. Discussess integration of computers in teaching math. Lots of Tutorials: GeoGebra, Wordpress blogging, Geometer's Sketchpad, etc.