What’s Wrong with Algebra

What are the biggest mistakes that kids (and often teachers) make with algebra? PCI Education’s Algebra City text and assessment program targets the 28 most common algebraic faux pas to bring students up to proficiency. The hope is that by showing where students go wrong in a comic book format, teachers can pull them back on the mathematical straight and narrow.  

 

Freebee Friday: Find x on Shmoop

Shmoop has beefed up its pre-Algebra resource site, and it can help any struggling student or teacher with a slew of math-oriented content. In addition to topics like basic operations, fractions and ratios, the site has a large geometry section as well as one on statistics and probability.

 

 

Freebee Friday: Chrome Calculator

The apps that run within Google’s Chrome Web Browser are becoming more numerous and varied, with some aimed right at the classroom. The latest is a cool graphing calculator that’s absolutely free. Rather than spending a hundred dollars for a calculator or even $10 or $15 for a Windows program, Desmos has a freebee calculator that should fit into every math and science classroom. On top of regular calculations, it can graph any function on an X-Y Cartesian plane as well as polar coordinates.

I used it for a few weeks and the calculator loads in a flash and runs on even minimalist netbooks. That’s because most of the heavy processing takes place at Google’s servers. Desmos lets a group of kids work together, making the program perfect for a collaborative math project or physics lab. The best part is that there are many sample calculations that can be used in the calssroom and it’ll work on any computer that has a Chrome browser available for it, including PCs, Macs and Linux computers.

 

 

Freebee Friday: Math on the Go

Tired of kids forgetting the math they learned from September to May during June through August? Try exercising their brains over the summer with SuccessMaker’s Speed Math, an iPad app that reinforces math concepts and problem-solving techniques. The basics, like adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing are aimed at first-through-sixth graders and there along 48 levels of problems. It’s free until the end of September at the iTunes App store.

 

Freebee Friday: Math, the Microsoft Way

It’s hard to do anything with a computer without touching Microsoft programs, but they also have a slew of free applications, lesson plans and curriculum for math classes. Mathematics 4.0 has a great classroom guide that has a PC-based (sorry, Mac fans) graphic calculator, units conversion app and a fairly compete equations and formula library; it’s good for 1^st through 12^th graders. There’re also add-in programs for Word and One Note as well as posters and videos to help push the leaning process.

 

 

Graph It

Graphing data is no longer for high schoolers because Key Curriculum Press’s TinkerPlots can help those in grades four through eight to visualize numerical trends and learn statistics and probability without pain. The program’s Sampler lets kids and teachers try out ideas with mathematical simulations. There are versions for PC and Macs and you can try the full program for 20 minutes before buying it. A single copy costs $50, while a school or district can license it for $10 per seat. On top of how-to videos, the new version has a slew of new activities, like weighing backpacks or random coin flips, that can become instant lesson plans.

 

 

 

 

 

AP Help

As more and more students take college-level Advanced placement courses, there’s a need for online prep classes to get them ready to take the challenging college-level test. Shmoop now has a slew of online classes, including new ones for Calculus AB and BC as well as Psychology, Macroeconomics and Microeconomics. A six month license for the online prep classes costs $13 (with school-wide discounts available), and includes a comprehensive review, hundreds of sample problems and full-length practice exams.

 

 

Turning Students into Mathletes

Looking to go beyond chalk and the blackboard to explain everything from trigonometric proofs to solving quadratic equations? The new version of Mathletics is better than ever with as close to a complete online mathematics curriculum as exists. It covers the gamut from Kindergarten (numbers, shapes and measurement) to grade 12 (geometry, statistics, probability and advanced algebra) with more than 750 individual topics.

The best part is that it not only works on both PCs and Macs as long as they have a recent Web browser, but it is Web-based so that students and teachers can use the service at any time, day or night.

There’s no shortage of interactive elements and videos to explain a variety of math concepts, techniques and tricks for solving problems. Students can customize their on-screen avatar and learn at their own pace by doing problems that get progressively harder. Once they’ve mastered a skill, they can move on to the next section or keep working on the previous section until it feels right.

The program’s Teacher Center lets one person keep any eye on an entire class’s progress, or lack of it. On top of printing a wide assortment of worksheets for students to practice on the teacher can divide the class into groups at the same level, view or print student reports and export any results to a spreadsheet for grading or school purposes.

It costs $59 per student or $1,700 for a school-wide site license for roughly 250 students, and the company offers a free trial. Along the way, kids earn credits that teachers can use to earn prizes or just set up a class- or school-wide competition. The program tracks individual student progress and teachers can spur kids on by having them compete for a place on the leader board on the program’s home page.

 

Freebee Friday Becomes Fractal Friday

It may be five years old, but Drexel Univeristy’s mathforum’s page on Madelbrodt fractals is an oldie by goodie. It is a must have on any math teacher’s Favorites list and has good information about what a fractal is, a biography of Benoit Mandelbrodt and incredibly beautiful images of a variety of fractals. The guts of the site let you customize these mathematical representations so everyone in the class can get a feel for the effect of the different parameters. It works best with Internet Explorer and the app is a great take-home or in-class assignment.

Freebee Friday: Calculator by the Numbers

Who needs a box full of expensive graphing calculators at $100 each when a PC can do just as well. Maybe, even better because rather than a fuzzy black and white screen, you’re using a bright color display. My favorite at the moment is Runiter’s Graphing 3D 3.2, which is available for PCs, Macs and Linux computers. It’s perfect for graphing functions, including parametric equations and inequalities. Alongside the graph is a table of the coordinates. Unlike other calculators, this one can run full screen so that the subtlety of the graphing comes through. The free basic version should be plenty for most schools, but there is a $50 commercial version as well.