MathsKit is a page of all those everyday resources.
MathsLinks now has over 500 online activites for maths, all categorised.
My new site, MathsFaculty is for maths teachers to share. I suspect that everyday, teachers waste time searching for, and if they don’t find, creating resources. Let’s fix that by sharing.

Each week, I’m going to use this blog to summarise what has been added across these sites.

* “This Week” is more like “recently” for this first review.

This week on MathsLinks:

Exploring Gradient in Google Earth and Autograph

12 May 2012

Derivative Calculator

7 May 2012

The Scale of the Universe 2

29 Apr 2012

Radian Measure (TANTON Mathematics)

29 Apr 2012

Projectile Motion

29 Apr 2012

Projectile Motion Applet

29 Apr 2012

Projectile Motion

29 Apr 2012

Red dragonfly mathematics challenge

27 Apr 2012

Slope Dude

27 Apr 2012

My Triangle, James Blunt on Sesame Street

25 Apr 2012

Powers of Ten

24 Apr 2012

This week on MathsFaculty:

National Mathematics Day is Friday 18 May and looks at codes and code-breaking — to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing.

The AAMT have a number of code-breaking exercises on their web-site: National Mathematics Day 2012.
Which reminded me to share the file below. I made this earlier in the year for a Year 7 enrichment maths program. The interactive Excel file contains six code-breaking activities.

Each year I use the TV Show, The Biggest Loser, as an application of percentages – here is a worksheet for 2012 setting out the contestant data that your students can use to perform some calculations.

I’m completing this activity earlier than normal this year, so the data is from earlier in the competition.

Also look at the 2011 version for a suggestion to do this as a computer task.

James Tanton’s very timely videos:
Video 1: The Demonstration
Video 2: The Explanation

There’s a widely linked Java applet
The Locker Problem
but it doesn’t work correctly for me (on a Mac).

And another visualization on Connected Mathematics.

This is not an easy problem, but hopefully by looking at the first 10 people, they may pick up on the pattern.

The app now has three quizzes, Mixed (+, −, ×, ÷), Measurement (metric unit conversion) and Percentages (common percentages).

Underneath the hood, I’ve made it easier for me to add new quizzes.

Whilst you can use the mouse to navigate through the questions and answers, you can also use the Page Down key. That is the same key used to forward slides in PowerPoint… so a remote control like this one from Jaycar can also be used.

Always happy to hear suggestions for quizzes, or feedback about problems (I haven’t had a chance to test this widely yet).

• Math Snacks
• M2T2
• Mathalicious ($ Pay what you can)
• Math Pickle
• Mathematics Assessment Project
• Rich Tasks
• The Chalk Face
• I Love Math

(Of course, there are numerous blogs that could be included here)

I’ve added these sites to MathsSearch meaning you could search these sites through there.

So, in the comments, where do you go for maths lessons and good lesson ideas?

For starters, 2011 was a year of change. Good change, but not as smooth as I expected. The “battle” that I thought I understood at my previous school has changed. I thought I had “cracked the nut” as Kate puts it. So has the nut changed in my new school or have my difficulties surfaced from being the new guy? It’s probably a combination of those factors and more. 2012 will hopefully be the year of establishment and sorting this out.

Then, there is so much information, inspiration and so many folks telling us how we should be teaching that it can become overwhelming. It becomes difficult to know which direction to head, which idea to pursue and where to apply my efforts. So what to do? One option is to ignore. Like you (given you’re reading a blog) I can’t do that. But I do need to filter and focus. I need to filter the sources of information and focus on particular areas of learning and creating/building.

2012 is looking like a year of quiet reflection (i.e. maybe not much on this blog), contemplation and trial and error.

¹ happy that befuddlement is a real word

On Flickr.

Watch this video summarising the updates, or read on…

GoMaths

When I’ve asked a class to correctly copy a web-site address from the board I have never had much success. Short URL services (like bit.ly) can help, but their strings of random characters can be just as confusing. Links posted on Edmodo or Moodle can resolve the problem, but what if you have a spur of the moment, “let’s investigate” idea. If you know the link you want is on MathsLinks, for example this Frequency Distribution Table with Cumulative Frequency, you can look it up and give the students this GoMaths link: gomaths.net/2369 it will skip MathsLinks and take them directly to the site. Better yet, if you have a projector click Show URL and the link will appear on the screen

This is a simple, but for me exciting addition. I used it many times in the last week of term like when I had kids making snowflakes.

The Australian Curriculum

MathsLinks is browsable by Topic or by NSW Board of Studies syllabus. This term, I added references to The Australian Curriculum, so far I’ve done Years 6 to 10.

Most links, however, have not been aligned to this curriculum. This is where you can help. If you visit any link, e.g. 3-D Shapes, and are logged in to the site you will see a “Help align this link to The Australian Curriculum.” link (if the link has not already been aligned). This link will take you to a simple form that links to the Australia Curriculum outcomes – pick the relevant ones and submit.

Ratings

What is the best tool for Isometric drawings? this one or this one. Each link can now be ranked from 1 to 5 stars, you don’t even need to be logged in to the site. I think ratings will make the site even more useful.

A question: Do you think adding the ability to comment on a link would be helpful? For example, would you share via a comment how you have used a link in your class?

Embed Links

Not mentioned in the video, if you’re logged-in to MathsLinks, below the link you will see BETA: Embed. You can now embed the details of a link into your own site. Just like this:

Other stuff

A couple of other things:

• a link to a video on a site like YouTube, for example, A centre for ants!? has a button Play Video which allows you to play the video on a darkened background without leaving the MathsLinks site and avoiding the extra mess of YouTube. This does not get around YouTube being blocked for students.
• you can now use your Facebook, Google, LinkedIn or Twitter account to login to MathsLinks. Saves you remembering more passwords.
• suggestions are always welcome, just contact me

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