Searching through the Internet for resources for your classroom can be very time consuming and frustrating.
This page was designed to help teachers incorporate the Internet in their Junior or Intermediate
mathematics classrooms.
For those who have experience searching through the Internet for
mathematics activities please continue on below in the annotated
explorations. Others are invited to sample some specific pages that
could be implemented in your classroom tomorrow. Please click on the
highlighted text to visit the site. Directly below are 5 resource
examples that may be found on the Internet.
Game -- Play with the
Towers of
Hanoi! Click on the buttons with the angle brackets that indicate the direction and number of
pegs of the move. Change the number of disks and your number of moves will be recorded each time.
Lesson
Plan -- Scroll down and click on See the Lesson Plan
under Lesson One (of six) regarding problem solving.
Math History -- Attaching
a face or a story to a mathematical concept may draw some students in. Check out
Pythagoras here.
Interactive
Activity -- In the yellow window on the left, scroll down and click on X-Intercept
and watch what happens to the equations below as you manipulate the line.
Problem &
Solution -- Find the
area of the shaded region. Go through the solution and enjoy the poetry!
Chopping Broccoli A fun introduction to some simple fractals, how they are
created and where they are found in nature. This site also has a link to The Spanky Fractal
Database for some cool looking fractals.
Colourful Mathematics
"Colourful Mathematics is a series of educational software
presenting advanced mathematical
concepts to K-12 students in a game-oriented approach. The five games
offered utilize simple
colouring and/or drawing techniques to illustrate some state of the art
mathematical concepts
from graph theory and computer science." The games must be downloaded
before being used.
Encyclopedia of Mathematics Explanations and
definitions await for hundreds of mathematical terms and concepts.
Search using keywords or explore alphabetically by clicking the letter
that your term starts with. A fantastic resource!
Fractals
Unit for J/I Students Cynthia Lanius has put together an extensive look at fractals for
elementary students with access to printed
versions of all her on-line pages. She explains what fractals are and
why we should be
teaching them. Her Java version of the The
Sierpinski Triangle is incredible. Check it out!
History of Mathematics:
A Timeline
J. Fillmore, of the University of California San Diego, has prepared a clickable, chronological list of
important highlights in the history of mathematics. Bring some background to your classroom with some
information on when and where the math originated! From the Origins of Zero to Pythagoras' Scholarly Society to
Magic Squares, there is something
bound to enlighten or brighten up your classroom!
History of Mathematics Archive Another excellent
resource to stimulate the math classroom. Look into the
chronological timelines and appreciate the organization of the various
periods. They also have two biography
indices, (alphabetical
and chronological) to help you find who or what your looking for
Uniform Polyhedra Wow! Check out 80 different polyhedra with your students. Watch an
animation of each one choosing
from a well designed Visual
Index. Line, face and edge information is also available.
Cuisenaire Learning Place
New problems appear every month for the elementary student from all math
strands. The Replacing
Trees problem is a good example
relating the communication of a problem and environmental studies.
Interactive
Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles A wealth of text, animation and resources can be found here but leave a
lot of time for exploring for something at the
elementary level. Most deal with higher level thinking. Check out Alexander Bogomolny's collections of
puzzles and other people's sites. His Exchange might answer some of your questions.
Math
Archives Browse or search for the topic of your choice. There are so many
possible connections such as Art and Music in
Math Education and Arithmetic
and each have small
icons telling the viewer the grade level and additional information.
Math Central
Browse by curriculum strand in the elementary (K-5) and middle (6-9) levels in their
resource rooms.
Math Forum This site is incredibly exhaustive! Get hooked in the Elementary School Student
Centre or stay on top of the latest as a teacher in their Research Division. Students
can find answers to their questions by searching response archives or they can
Ask Dr. Math (elementary
or middle)
their own question. The site is fully searchable and has links to
a plethora of resourceful Internet sites all compiled in Steve's Dump. Students can
also solve challenges with MathMagic in
4-6 and 7-9 divisions.
Math Probe Enjoy manipulating a line on graph paper to discover the characteristics of
slope. What happens when the line is horizontal or vertical? As students move
the line, the slope, the intercepts and the equation of the line constantly
change. Or, watch the screen appear three-dimensional when manipulating its
dodecahedron, as a net or a skeleton. Students can interactively explore a dozen other
problems including bar graphs, probability, and conversion.
Mathematics Lesson Database Search by division (K-12) and/or content area (although I received too
many
errors when searching) or browse their entire database in chart form
displaying content area, level, lesson title and author. Note that this
site from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign points you to
other URLs where the lessons actually exist.
Mathmania Presently under construction, this site
challenges its viewers with problems to solve.
The Internet can definitely supplement mathematics lessons or be used to
teach some specific concept or idea. The Math Forum proved to be the most useful when considering
its well organized wealth of information, opportunities and connections to other useful sites.
Go to: [Top]--[Specific]--[Broad]--[Collections]
URL of this document: http://spartan.ac.BrockU.CA/~emuller/math.html
E-mail address of: emuller@spartan.ac.Brock.CA
Revised or reviewed: 98.05.14
(c) copyright 1998 Kevin S. Dyck
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