Here’s a rundown of some of the games and activities that I’ve recently used in the classroom, along with various other useful links that I can see being applicable to learning and education.
1. Ed On Your Own Crossword Puzzles – This particular link from Ed on Your Own has a list of free printable math crossword puzzles for the classroom. Recently I used the One Step Equation Crossword Puzzle and the Two Step Equation Crossword Puzzle with my students. Even the students who were not doing so well with solving equations seem to be doing significantly better after doing these puzzles.
2. McGraw Hill Game Zone Resources – This website is full of wonderful games that can be used in the classroom, such as this Measurement Relay Game. Essentially, this is one of those ‘I Have. Who Has?” Activities. But what I like to do with them is cut them out and have the students put the questions and answers together in domino-style format. The students really seem to enjoy this for the most part, it’s less chaotic than having everyone run around the room all at the same time, and it’s conducive to having the students work in small groups.
3. Ratio and Proportion weblinks – This is a list of weblinks that I found from Mathmammoth. If you hunt around their website long enough, you will also find a list of Integer weblinks, among others. I think tha these lists of weblinks would be perfect places to start in putting together a spectacular Web Quest for students. There were definitely resources on there that I hadn’t heard about in the past.
4. BBC Podcasts: A Brief History of Mathematics – Let me just say this… don’t you just love the British? And if a British Podcast doesn’t float your boat, try looking at some videos over at EduTube, this video of a math teacher rapping. Hey, it’s not great compared to some of the impromptu songs that I’ve sung during my classes in order to keep my students interested in the lessons. I’m a big fan of keeping students engaged in the classroom.
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6. Best Free Online Applications and Services – This is really great not only because I haven’t heard of many of these resources before, but because they are all on-line. This eliminates the need for pesky downloads and making sure that applications are compatible with various operating systems. I also liked that Wolfram Alpha is highlighted as being the Best Free Online Answer Engine. Any list that gives a shoutout to Wolfram Alpha is a respectable list in my book.
7. The History, Use, and Abuse of QR Codes – This is a fairly in-depth Slideshare that I found helpful in my quest to eventually integrate QR Codes into my teaching. I’m really thinking about putting QR codes on my syllabus, and homework assignments from now on just to try to alleviate some of the complaints that I often get from students about not being able to find an assignment that I’ve posted on the web. And by having to put the assignment on the web before even passing it out, I will also know that I haven’t sent students to a web resource that I might have actually forgotten to post. (It’s happened!)
8. 20 Free Web Apps for the 2.0 Student – I don’t think that all of these will work for every student, but there are a few good resources on the list that I would recommend for everyone, such as Phone Evite, a website that allows you to send out mass voicemails; Mikogo, a website that allows for remote desktop sharing; and Mint, free personal finance software. I’m actually considering using Mint myself since it’s part of the Intuit Brand, which I already highly respect since I’ve been using TurboTax for several years now.
