• I have a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois and have taught college level math for 12 years
• More importantly for this talk I have two children: a 4th grader and a 3rd grader, both in the gifted program at school, who I like to challenge with math problems
• As they have grown, I’ve found many ways to use computer to do this
• Want to share some of those ways with you

 

• When I first had the idea, I wasn’t sure I could fill 50 minutes
• As I got to looking, there was SO much that I could do, I had to limit my focus some and think much more on how to organize the talk
• As with most of my talks, you can find the handouts on-line
• http://www.sbuniv.edu/~khopkins/handouts/01/fall01.htm
• Websites given in this presentation will be links there
• Excel spreadsheets referenced will be downloadable from the links given there
• So, when we don’t get through the handout, you can look further if you like what you see in the first of this talk

 

• Technology can free up teacher’s time
• from drilling on skills
• to working with problem solving and concept mastery
• Technology can eat up teacher’s time
• Learning how to use it effectively to accomplish the goals above takes time and effort as well
• Finding appropriate tools, at an affordable cost, to do what you really want them to

• Realize there are multiple ways to use computer technology to help students learn elementary math topics
• Identify some of the advantages and disadvantages of each way
• Purchase software-probably the most obvious
• Use websites-there are many good ones
• Program your own, could use Excel to do

• Giving websites that discuss/review some specific software and how that software addresses a topic
• Giving useful website addresses, with some brief examples of what you might find there
• Giving ideas on how you can use what you have, like Excel

• Interactive Flashcards/Worksheets
• Produce a variety of problems related to different skills
• Instant feedback (correct vs incorrect)
• Use of multimedia, so often more entertaining than paper and pencil work would be when reviewing skills to master them

• Can be more accurate than hand-drawn
• Addition or Multiplication Table
• m by n grid to illustrate multiplication or division
• Fractions
• Graphs

• Evaluate students’ thought process-which is stressed on MAP tests
• Diagnose errors and then explain them so a child understands his/her error
• Explain concepts in a variety of ways until a child understands
• Know when a child is ready to move to next skill (computers are improving at this)
• Insure the child stays on task

• Give student activities
• On-line, interactive form
• In worksheet or flashcard form
• Give ideas for teachers
• lesson plans
• activity ideas
• Most of the good ones have both aspects
• Most do more subjects than just math
• I may point out only one activity on some very good sites.

• Advantages
• Cost-usually free
• User Friendly
• Kid Friendly
• Disadvantages
• Have to have reliable and fast internet access to use
• Have to find a website to do EXACTLY what you want
• Harder to monitor individual student progress

• Articles or advertisements in professional journals
• Search the web, say for math flashcards, online math activity, math drill, etc.
• Educator sites-I’ll give some of these later in the talk as good "start-off" sites

• Advantages
• Cost-assuming Excel is already available
• Can program it to do EXACTLY what you want

• Disadvantages
• Have to have Excel (and use Macros in it for many of these examples)
• HAVE to program it to do EXACTLY what you want
• Requires skill to program
• Not user friendly
• Hard to make kid friendly
• Harder to monitor individual student progress

• Duplicate activities that I found in worksheets, software or websites
• Could duplicate many of these illustrations without macros, but would not be interactive with the child
• Required I learned to use macros to make the illustration interactive

• Advantages
• User Friendly
• Kid Friendly
• Monitors progress of individual students

• Disadvantages
• Cost, especially for multiple or site licenses
• Getting Installed on Computer or School Network
• Have to find a package to do EXACTLY what you want
• Could need multiple packages to address all the skills

• Catalogs or at conferences
• Articles or advertisements in professional journals
• Check out on-line books stores like www.amazon.com, barnes and noble (www.bn.com), www.ebay.com and search for math software
• Check on-line reviews

• Because I am cheap and couldn’t afford to buy (let alone find time to evaluate) a lot of commercial programs
• I’ve focused more on the free resources, like the web and Excel programs, in this talk
• The next sites should give plenty of ideas about commercial software

Children’s Software Revue: A magazine

• http://www.childrenssoftware.com/default.html
• Over 5000 reviews

• Children’s Software Reviews: A website
• http://www.geocities.com/~reviewcorner/reviews.html

• http://hometown.aol.com/NReyno/reviewlinks.html gives links to lots of review sites


 
• http://www.TheReviewZone.com/math-science-index.html
• http://www.best.com/~readit/superkids/search/subject.cgi?terms=Math
• http://www.siia.net/divisions/education/softreview.asp has a list of review websites
• http://ra.terc.edu/resources/technology/software.html

 

• http://www.eduhound.com/edumatch/main.html
• Search for educational software matched to your state's curriculum standards, your teaching style and all the features you prefer.
• Do the Supersearch to get the matching to state standards
• Once you see a title, you can see that software title graded as to how it addresses ALL the state standards
• Can get 30 day FREE preview of any software it finds
• I was AMAZED at what this site seemed able to do to help teacher’s locate software

 
 
 

Organization Sites

• There is an NSF grant to create software to address standards: http://www.escot.org/
• It is in early stages

 

• Lots of sites aimed at Elementary Teachers
• Some have a cost (premium sites)
• Some of the sites are showing a free version of something they sell also

 

• DESE Frameworks
• http://www.dese.state.mo.us/divinstr/curriculum/ frameworks/math.html-sample activities given within it
• http://www.dese.state.mo.us/divinstr/curriculum/ frameworks/supplement/math.htm has supplemental activities
• MAP Tests
• http://www.dese.state.mo.us/divinstr/assess/math /releaseditems/release.htm released items fromMAP tests
• NCTM Standards
• http://illuminations.nctm.org/index2.html is an interactive site that relates to the NCTM standards

• According to this website
• Homeroom.com is a robust, Web-based assessment and diagnostic tool for grades 3-11
• Housing over 100,000 math and reading questions aligned to all state standards
• Create customized practice tests specific to the skills measured by a state assessment or standard
• Trend and track student performance in real time
• Does cost, I couldn’t find out how much at their site

• Destination Math™ courses span grades 4-12 and can be accessed directly from the Internet, allowing students to study mathematical concepts anytime, anywhere
• Includes assessment tools for student mastery
• Correlated to State and national curriculum standards
• Available by subscription via Web or on CD
• Each course is $150-$200

• Math problems organized into 70 levels (and increasing)
• addition, subtraction, ordering, multiplication and division, dealing with numbers and fractions, decimals, algebra, geometry, time
• In direct as well as more analytic word problem format
• Timed "quizzes" with exactly the type and number of problems needed
• It will grade the submitted answers
• Teacher (or parents) can get the scores for all your students in a nice table for FREE

 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 

• http://www.inew.com/
• You will find over 800 core math skills with millions of variations for K-6
• It has every skill kids need to learn to pass their grade (i.e. addition, subtraction, fractions, etc)
• INEW is based by grade so that kids of every age may work at their own pace and skill
• Will generate a report on how each student is doing
• Will print out worksheet with answer key

 

 

• http://www.aaamath.com/

• http://www.math.com/

• http://www.aplusmath.com
• Various Flashcards and other games

• http://www.learningplanet.com/sam/sm/spaceymath.htm
• A more arcade version to practice skills

• http://www.learningplanet.com/act/mayhem/
• Can compete with others to see who is fastest
• 

• http://www.funbrain.com/kidscenter.html
• a variety of math games
• most have a variety of difficulty levels

• http://www.gamequarium.com/math.htm

• http://www.teachrkids.com/

Excel Program

• I wrote some Excel programs to try and duplicate on-line activities
• Basic operation drills
• Multiplication as a grid
• Comparison Drills
• Rounding
• Fraction drills

• http://www.mathfactcafe.com/
• pregenerated sheets, made to specification, and flashcards
• http://home.att.net/~bandcparker/worksheets.html
• Links to lots of sites that have or produce worksheets
• http://members.singlepoint.net/sbryce/mathwork/
• http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/math/
• http://worksheets.teach-nology.com/math/
• http://www.numeracysoftware.com/free.html
• http://www.edhelper.com/math.htm

• http://courseliner.fairbanks.org/4DCGI/34012710012934031411/ cs_index.cgi?ss=0

• Have it make a worksheet

• "You can easily and quickly create professional-quality mathematics worksheets to provide students in grades K to 10 with skills development, practice, and review"
• whole number operations with decimals and currency, fractions, percent, place value
• number patterns, factors, multiples, rounding numbers
• comparing and ordering numbers
• angles, perimeter and area, polygons, and lots more
• Available for free 30 day trial, then $25 to continue

http://funbrain.com/teachers/

• Join the 250,000+ classrooms using Quiz Lab and tap into the web's largest online collection of teacher-created quizzes.
• Only $29.95 per year per teacher (group discounts available)
• 1. Select from thousands of pre-made quizzes or create your own in minutes.
• 2. Students take your quizzes online.
• 3. Quiz Lab scores, records, analyzes, and emails the results to you automatically.

• http://www.visualfractions.com/
• Not very kid friendly, but has some interesting ideas on how some fraction concepts can be explained
• Reducing, Multiplying, Comparing, Adding, & more
• Uses circles and lines to denote fractions

• http://www.netrover.com/~kingskid/MulTab/Applet.html

AOL

• AOL has two very nice teacher sites
• http://school.aol.com/primary/math.adp gives links to primary activities
• http://aol.statestandards.com/ lets you search, by state, various state standards to find lesson plans that match the particular standard
• These are NOT JUST math

• More than 16,000 resources
• Both Web and Print Resources
• Can search for materials based on grade level, type of material, cost: http://www.enc.org/resources/search/
• Can locate other websites by topic: http://www.enc.org/weblinks/math/

 
 

• For those who need/want more challenging problems
• http://www.moctm.org/Contests/mathcontests.htm
• http://www.mathleague.com/contests.htm
• http://mathforum.com/elempow/
• http://www.dupagechildrensmuseum.org/aunty/index.html
• http://www.figurethis.org/
• http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr145.shtml

• http://school.discovery.com/homeworkhelp/webmath/
• has on-line help for solving a variety of problems
• http://www.dositey.com/
• Interactive lessons and exercises, open-ended questions, print worksheets, challenging problems and more…
• http://www.k111.k12.il.us/king/math.htm
• King's List of Math Activities
• http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/edhd/programs/ASPIRE
• Third year of three year project-math assessment activities grouped by grade level
• ASPECT and ASPEN are previous two years and they have activities also
• http://trackstar.hprtec.org/TSsearch.html
• Search for activity/lesson plan by standard

• Scholastic: http://www.scholastic.com/
• can search by grade level
• for lesson plans, online activities, professional development
• By topic within math
• http://school.aol.com/elementary/math_activities.adp gives links to activities for about 5 publisher’s texts

• http://www.lessonplanspage.com/
• by grade level, then organized by topic
• http://forum.swarthmore.edu/teachers/
• Math forum teacher links
• http://ofcn.org/cyber.serv/academy/ace/
• The Academy Curriculum Exchange
• http://ericir.syr.edu/cgi-bin/lessons.cgi/Mathematics
• AskEric
• http://www.teachervision.com/tv/curriculum/lessonplans/index.html
• Search by topic and grade level
• http://explorer.scrtec.org/explorer-db/browse/static/Mathematics/index.html
• http://www.moteachingjobs.com/lessons/mainsearch.cfm
• Search by grade level, topic, or Show-Me Standard

 
 

Organization Sites

• Internet Resources from NCTM
• http://illuminations.nctm.org/index2.html
• http://standards.nctm.org/document/eexamples/index.htm gives electronic examples of how certain standards can be taught
• http://illuminations.nctm.org/swr/index.html can selectively search (by topic and grade range) more than 350 carefully reviewed Internet math resources
• Math Forum
• http://forum.swarthmore.edu/

• I hope you’ve gotten some ideas on how the computer can help elementary math teachers
• There are many useful sites and software packages available
• I hope you’ve seen a thing or two you can use in the near future to help you