Virtual Nerd Maths Teaching Videos and Resources
Virtual Nerd is a selection of dynamic videos and award-winning content that helps boost students’ mathematics skills. The resource aims to help pupils to master algebra and geometry by bringing content to life through images and sound, while making it relevant to 21st Century learning.
To celebrate World Maths Day (7 March), the Virtual Nerd interactive whiteboard mathematics lessons are now available free to teachers via Promethean Planet! Teachers can now access the resource free of charge on Planet, including its proprietary interactive online platform (Dynamic Whiteboard) and an extensive library of pre-recorded video tutorials.
There are over 800 resources available. Each video is in essence a recorded lecture – but as well as the video of the teacher, there are also two other parts of the screen, one showing the equation and the other showing a stepthrough of the calculation. Mouse over these areas to access additional information.
It’s an interesting free resource and will be of interest to secondary school maths teachers. You need to be a Promethean Planet member to access them, but it is free to do so. This will make it tricky to give students access – perhaps set up a class Planet account? Alternatively it will give you a taste of Virtual Nerd and help you decide if it’s worth getting a school subscription.
Read MoreFluidMath – Maths Handwriting Recognition for the IWB
FluidMath is maths-based handwriting recognition software. It enables teachers and students to easily create, solve, graph and animate math and physics problems all in their own handwriting on any brand of interactive whiteboard or on a tablet PC. I also had it working very well with a Wacom graphics tablet when I tested the software this morning.
The software enables math teachers and students to easily create graphs and tables using their own handwriting. FluidMath graphs and makes tables for implicitly defined functions (like x=y2), relations, discrete functions (like the Fibonacci Sequence), parametric functions, and more!
The handwriting recognition software is pretty powerful, and deals with maths equations better than the built in ones for Smart and Promethean boards. I’d love to see it tweaked slightly to be able to cope with science formulae too.
It was very quick and easy to write a maths function, and convert it into a graph.
If you want to use equations in other software such as Microsoft Word you can simply write the expression in your own handwriting and paste it into a Word document. Equations are copied as MathML, Latex or as an image. You could combine Fluid Math with your regular IWB software such as Smart Notebook or ActivInspire – switch out to Fluid Maths to generate graphs and equations, and then copy/paste back into the IWB software later.
See more on the Fluid Maths YouTube channel.
The software is not free, licences start from around $100 per year per computer. You can download a free trial of Fluid Math here, and see if it’s something you want to spend money on. I can see it being a very useful piece of software in many maths departments.
If you’ve tried it, let me know what you think of it in the comments below!
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Math Quiz : Online GCSE and A Level Maths tests
Secondary maths teachers will be interested in Math Quiz, an online bank of maths tests for students. There are 4 levels of test : GCSE mathematics, A-Level mathematics, Foundation for University mathematics and University level mathematics.
The questions are multiple choice, usually 10 questions per test. Once the test is complete the system gives instant feedback to the user.
You need to register with the site to get the full functionality such as seeing full tests and saving your past tests to a user profile. It’s free to register, but there are also premium features which are available for a additional fee. Premium users can see full solutions to each question, printable tests and get access to more tests etc. A year’s membership costs £15, but at the moment you can get a year for just £5.
If you want to just check the site out you can do that without registering and access some cut-down quizzes.
The site uses something called MathML to correctly display mathematical expressions in the browser, so as such it works best in Firefox browsers rather than Internet Explorer.
Math Quiz would be useful for teachers to direct their students to for maths revision and maybe for running short tests in a lesson. It’s an interesting resource and well worth pointing your students towards it.
Take a look here : http://math-quiz.co.uk/
Let me know what you think in the comments.
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SeeMath – primary numeracy animations for the IWB
Primary school teachers might like to take a look at SeeMath.com, a free website with simple Flash animations of various maths concepts. Seemath.com has been designed by maths teacher Tal Greengard.
There are lots of different animations on the site, with new animations being added regularly.
It’s a nice resource to have bookmarked. The animations could be very useful as an alternative way of demonstrating some maths concepts.
A way of making the animations actually “full-screen” would be handy. Maximising the browser window doesnt make the animations much bigger than they are initially.
Take a look at : www.seemath.com
Read MoreMaths careers information and videos
Ever wondered what’s the point of maths? Did you know that quadratic equations and probability can be linked to football and that trigonometry can be linked to combating terrorism? In fact, maths is used in a huge number of practical ways – more than you may initially think.
The Mathscareers website has been designed to highlight the ways in which maths is used practically in daily life in professional and leisure scenarios. There are case studies to guide you through the practical ways in which maths can be used and highlight the many ways in which it can be applied to everyday settings.
The Mathscareers website contains a wealth of useful resources for maths teachers, and students studying maths. There are plenty of worksheets and resources on the site, click here to see a list.
There’s also a Mathscareers YouTube channel, which has some useful clips highlighting maths-based careers:
The Mathscareers website is managed and maintained by the Institute of Mathematics and supported by the London Mathematical Society and the Royal Statistical Society.
Read MoreGeoGebra – dynamic geometry tool
GeoGebra is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that joins geometry, algebra, tables, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. Even better, it’s free! GeoGebra has won loads of awards worldwide.
There are two different versions of Geogebra – a version you can download and run offline, and an online version you can access through your browser.
The Web version can be accessed here : http://www.geogebra.org/webstart/geogebra.html
And the downloadable version can be access here: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/
The GeoGebra site contains quick start guides, video tutorials and some downloadable books, which should help to get you up and running pretty quickly.
GeGebra is a very handy piece of software for maths teachers who want to demonstrate aspects of graphing, charting and geometry and find that their regular IWB software is not enough to do so.
Read MoreFurbles – a fun maths tool
Furbles is an old favourite of mine that I’d forgotten about until recently (thanks Lara!). Furbles started life as an idea for teaching statistics in an interesting way with children from KS1 to KS3. The original version was published in 2003 online, and its popularity spread.
Furbles was originally devised as an innovative way of imagining statistics and the depiction of statistics. You have a variety of creatures of different colours and shapes which you can move around on the screen. You can then arrange them into different charts and graphs to show simple frequency data. The children can see the Furbles move into the correct groups, and are then replaced by the corresponding bar graph, pie chart etc. It’s lovely and visual.
You can find out more here: http://ptolemy.co.uk/furbles
The old 2003 version is still freely available – and it’s well worth bookmarking: http://ptolemy.co.uk/furbles/furbles03 And if you like it I think the retail version is still available. Link on the website.
Bad Maths on Flickr
Inspired by a trip to Tescos recently where I saw this special offer, and by the Atrocious Apostrophe’s flickr group for all those instances of terrible punctuation, I decided to set up the Bad Maths Flickr group.
The aim is to collate any examples of bad maths out there in the real world. These images can then be used in maths lessons with students, getting them to spot the errors. It’s a fledgling group, but hopefully will grow.
If you’d like to submit any examples I’d love to have them in the group. Join here, and submit your flickr photos!
Read MoreSMART Notebook Maths Tools Demo
The newest official SMART Training and PD video is up on YouTube. It is a quick overview of the SMART Notebook Maths Tools, check it out:
Download a 30 day trial of the Maths tools here.
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About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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