So far, I have already had a lesson that allowed my students to utilize the technology available to them to help build their math skills. They had an entire class period in the computer lab to find age-appropriate and useful websites that can help them this year in their Algebra 1 course. I was monitoring students during the session, and the school filter was set so I did not have to worry about mature content popping up.
I have addressed my second goal by looking up blogs and informational websites related to mathematics and technology for grades four to nine. I already had several saved in my Google Reader account, but have been neglecting them for many months now. One piece of information I would love is a list of websites from a credible source that provide news and research findings about different types of technology used in the classroom, particularly middle school mathematics classrooms. I have the hardest time sifting through all the sites for classroom technology and mathematics to find ones that contain everything I want. Maybe my standards are too high!
How did the find Algebra resources activity go? If you are able to use a social bookmarking website at your school you could have students do the same search and make a database of all of the websites they found. If you cannot use any social bookmarking sites you could do something similar with a wiki and have students find cool sites and list them on the wiki. Another thing you could do is give students a list of the different topics they will be studying throughout the year and they could find general resources and also find some sources that are specific to certain topics.
ReplyDeleteThis probably will not get you exactly what you are looking for, but you could also go to a social bookmarking website and search for other people's bookmark sites and try to find a couple of good ones from other math teachers. These teachers might have already done a lot of the work for you and found several good sites for technology ideas and activities that you have not found on your own.