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This list of online resources for teaching mathematics is maintained by Brad Ballinger at Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, California.
I started the list for myself, but I’m trying to organize it to make life easier for anyone interested. Except, it’s growing faster than I’m organizing it. Please submit feedback by making a comment.
I’m starting to make categories that overlap to a certain extent, so some links will appear in multiple places in this file.
Disclaimer: I’m not in charge of many of the resources below. My own content is labeled as such. As for the rest: I’ve used some of these a lot, but others barely. Use at your own risk.
Table of Contents
Standards Documents and Resources
Including Students in Mathematics-Oriented Communities
Special-Purpose Math Software, including Virtual Manipulatives
Other Software Useful For Teaching Math
Specific GeoGebra Content I Like
Activities and Classroom Resources
Resources For Which I Don’t Have a Good Label or That I Just Haven’t Sorted Yet
Professional Development for Teachers
Standards Documents and Resources
(Started out as government and professional organizations. Boundary isn’t so clear anymore. Resources here should explicitly build on the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics, or have a closer relationship than that.)
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California Department of Education: Content Standards and Framework and Mathematics Curriculum Resources
California Math Project - Task Forces and links to other resources
MARS tasks at Mathshell’s Math Assessment Project
IllustrativeMathematics.org and their illustrations of the standards
InsideMathematics.org - see also Performance Tasks grades 2-12 (many developed by MARS)
Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP)
Achieve The Core - Free, classroom-ready resources. See Coherence Map, Progressions, and the essay The Structure is the Standards.
Progressions at University of Arizona. (Apparently same as at Achieve the Core, but listed in a more concise way.)
EDC’s Implementing the Mathematical Practice Standards - Illustrations of the practices, mostly at the level of grades 5-10. Also, see EDC’s Habits of Mind research site.
OpenMiddle - Source of CCSS-indexed problems.
CSU QR - Proposed change to the a-g requirements for California high schools.
Ed Reports - Curriculum reviews
California Curriculum Collaborative - Instructional materials guidance
List of Lists
(These are efforts kind of like my own. You will find some overlap.)
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Mathematical Musings’ resource list
Public Schools of North Carolina resource list
Robert Kaplinsky resource list
NRICH - Ton of stuff split out by grade level; includes content for students and other content for teachers.
Resilient Educator - Math teaching resources (PBL, Elementary, Middle, High School, PD)
Merlot -
Math Happenings - Jennifer Suh’s effort at humanizing mathematics. Or, maybe this is a list of activities? I’d kind of like to have them indexed by topic (though of course that doesn’t reflect the organic way in which the collection seems to have arisen).
Chase Orton has a sidebar full of blogs, etc.
Three J’s Learning - Math resources for parents.
My Fav Places to Find Rich Math Tasks, by Margie Pearse and Lane Walker
Zach Star’s video introduction to his list.
Math for Elementary Teachers Resources at University of Hawai’i Open Education Resources
Information Age Education’s Digital Filing Cabinet: Math Education
Henri Picciotto’s Math Education Page
Tim Brzezinksi’s GeoGebra Resources For Differentiated Discovery Learning, Meaningful Remediation, & Formative Assessment
Margie Pearse and Lane Walker’s list of sources for rich math tasks
Organizations
(This is separate from the earlier list of Standards Documents and Resources because they have broad interests, of which the standards may be a small part.)
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National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (Lots of pro reading here.)
Among other things, see
- NCTM Illuminations (Lessons and interactives)
- The Math Forum (Includes as a subset the Teacher2Teacher forum)
Mathematical Association of America (Insert blurb) (Instructional Practices Guide) (Math Horizons journal)
American Mathematical Society (Here’s an article about restoring confidence in mathematics)
Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences and their member societies. See also MET II.
California Mathematics Council
California Math Council to the Far North - For math teachers on California’s north coast.
Michigan Council of Teachers of Mathematics - a rich math task repository
NCISLA - Math and Science Ed Research. (Some broken links?)
Center for Algebraic Thinking - Research and resources about algebraic thinking. Includes an encyclopedia specific to this issue, a bank of formative assessments, and a list of appropriate technologies.
World Association of Lesson Studies -
TeachingWorks Resource Library - Pedagogy and subject-specific resources across the board.
Next Generation Learning Challenges - Not the NGSS.
Mathcommunities.org - “Students, parents, and educators coming together to play with math!”
The Young People’s Project - Promoting math literacy in order to remove obstacles to student success in school and life
National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics - Math PD site in England. I haven't seen much of their content yet, but the small amount I've seen was great.
Including Students in Mathematics-Oriented Communities
Art of Problem Solving community - Probably for grades 5-20. Requires login, but I’m pretty sure it’s free.
Crux Mathematicorum - Free online journal. (I hear that students can publish here.) Great source of interesting problems.
PROMYS - Six week summer camp for high school students. Boston University. Probably costs $0 - $6000.
COSMOS (UCD, UCI, UCSD, UCSC) - California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science, a four week residential summer camp for high school students. Probably costs $0 - $6000.
Mathcommunities.org - “Students, parents, and educators coming together to play with math!”
(The Joyful Math Jamboree)
General Math Software
(Flexible programs you can use to do a wide variety of mathematical things.)
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GeoGebra - Interactive geometry; graphing calculator; 2D/3D; spreadsheet. Online and multi-platform. The online community has made over a million free applets (which creates its own problems, but at least there’s momentum). I fanatically recommend GeoGebra to people at cocktail parties. See more detail below.
Desmos - Graphing calculator (now in 3D, too), etc. Highly recommended by many. One really useful feature: the ability to have students on different devices interacting within a single activity.
- There’s a lot of overlap between GeoGebra and Desmos. [Insert comparison of features here]
- I increasingly find that I want a GeoGebra v5 interface with the multi-editing capabilities of a GoogleDoc or OverLeaf. If GeoGebra or Desmos does that, I haven’t heard.
Fawn Nguyen's Desmos implementation of MARS tasks
Sage - Open source math engine.
Winplot - Graphing software. I haven’t used it, but I’ve heard good things.
Geometry Expressions - Constraint-based interactive geometry. Now with a free web interface.
Special-Purpose Math Software, including Virtual Manipulatives
(Programs that do a few specific, pre-determined mathematical things.)
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Shodor - Interactives and other computation science resources
The Math Learning Center: virtual manipulatives
Expired? National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
Maybe NLVM is now MattiMath with a paywall.
Expired? TheDigitalScoop’s list of virtual manipulatives on Symbaloo
Mathplayground.com - This link is to activities for strengthening one’s use of strip diagrams to solve word problems.
Geometrygames.org - Jeff Weeks’ collection of almost a dozen geometry and topology programs. Includes symmetry pattern generators, polyhedra, and games you can play (like chess, tic-tac-toe, and mazes) in unfamiliar settings such as the torus (where Pac Man is native!), Klein bottle, and hyperbolic plane. I use Kali and KaleidoTile every year with future teachers of one stripe or another.
Stella - Polyhedron nets.
Base Ten Blocks:
ABCYa (4 sizes. Why do they sort them small to large?)
CoolMath4Kids (Better functionality than ABCYa, but only 3 sizes)
MathLearningCenter.org (Comparable to CoolMath4Kids)
CPM Tiles - includes base ten blocks, algebra tiles, etc.
Mathigon - No fuss digital tangrams. WHAT. WHO AM I KIDDING. There’s a lot more than tangrams here! Free, has student accounts, parents accounts, teacher accounts. Still under construction.
MathLearningCenter.org - free virtual manipulatives.
BrainingCamp.com - (no longer free) virtual manipulatives.
Didax.com - free virtual manipulatives hosted on a site that sells physical manipulatives.
NCTM Illuminations - Virtual manipulatives (Nice isometric drawing applet)
CSAcademy.com - Computer programming tutorials and challenges. Linked here: an app they have for representing graphs (in the graph theory sense, not the graphing calculator sense).
Juan Carlos Ponce Campuzano - Open source applets and texts (complex analysis, dynamic simulations)
MathMatize - I don't know what this is yet. Maybe live polling for use in online classes? All I know is that Grant Sanderson recommended it.
The Morally Gray
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These tools have the potential to solve a math problem without it ever passing through students’ heads. They do have legitimate uses--but depending on how they are used, they can also be used to mimic proficiency while completely avoiding any mathematical learning.
Some would argue that humans shouldn’t waste their time learning skills that can be so easily handled via technology. I think the endpoint of this argument is a populace who can’t multiply a number by 10 without a calculator. There are reasons for learning skills that machines can do better, such as:
- Sometimes (as in the “multiply by 10” example above), it takes longer to interact with a machine than it would take to solve the problem mentally. The machine’s (sometimes) superior solution speed is throttled by the time you spend hunting for your phone.
- Sometimes you don’t have access to the device at all: you left it somewhere, your kid has it, your kid left it somewhere, it’s out of battery because your kid had it (do you detect a theme?), etc.
- Fluency with different computational strategies often generalizes and leads to insight. Machines are often better at the first part, but humans who aren’t too dependent upon machines are better at the second.
Perhaps you can add to this list. My point is: anyone who uses the following software should reflect on how they are using it, and whether doing so deprives them of valuable learning. Meanwhile, teachers should be aware that these exist, and design assignments accordingly.
Wolfram Alpha - Computational engine
Photomath - App for solving math problems via smartphone camera
Slader - Solutions to textbook problems. Apparently it’s now “Quizlet” and has a paywall.
Chegg
OneNote?
Mathway?
Other Software Useful For Teaching Math
(These don’t do mathematical things, exactly, but they are still useful in the math classroom.)
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LaTeX - No link here because where you should go depends on what system you’re running. But the point is, this is probably the most popular tool for publishing professional mathematics articles. If you’re serious about writing math, you should learn about it. Oh, if you insist on a platform-independent link, try Overleaf. I’ve been using it with students to collaboratively edit solutions to a list of problems. Sweet. (I think this is free for single-user stuff but there’s a paywall for other features.)
I used to have a link here to Todaysmeet.com, but it no longer exists. It used to be an unsecured, short term Twitter-like feed. This was a good way to share URLs at a meeting with strangers who have smartphones. Currently, my replacement idea is a google doc with a QR code to avoid long URLs, kind of like this document.
Socrative - For the use of clicker technology in classrooms.
Flippity.net - Easily turn a Google spreadsheet into various cool stuff (random name picker and group maker, custom Jeopardy/Bingo/etc. games, flashcards, and so on). I’m starting to use this a little more. I made a Google Form to allow my students to build the source file from which Flippity will build a flashcard set. Hey, it’s not easy being this lazy!
GoFormative
Specific GeoGebra Content I Like
(GeoGebra is one of the “General Math Software” packages mentioned above. I can say without exaggeration that it has been my single favorite program since around 2008. People use it to make special-purpose doohickies. Lately, I’ve spent more time building than browsing, so I expect this section to grow very slowly.)
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Here’s my GeoGebra stuff.
Duane Habecker’s Fraction Book and Elementary School Applets and Puzzles and Games and Fun Stuff and Analog Clock
John Golden’s Flip Flop Puzzle (part of his book for preservice high school teachers)
John Golden’s GeoGebra Book on Transformations
Tim Brzezinski’s Geometry Discovery Lessons and Calculus Resources
Michael Borcherds’ Triangle Paradox (compare to my implementation of Serlio’s Paradox)
Steve Phelps’ Proofs Without Words
Pearson Interactive Calculus Figures by Brzezinski, Hopkins, Phelps, and Renault
GeoGebra Tutorials:
https://geogebra.kikora.com/c (Interactive. Try navigating by the dots at the top of the page, especially when the third page doesn’t advance correctly.)
This doesn’t appear to be GeoGebra, but could easily be implemented as such:
Phet tool for exploring Least Squares Regression
Bloggers, etc.
(These are individuals, or projects that I identify with individuals, or something along those lines.)
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Jo Boaler. (This is Youcubed. A source of many interesting math tasks.)
Dan Meyer (Brilliant.) Oh, and here’s his matrix of 3-act-math tasks, and here’s his directory of math headaches.
Bill Lombard (His old URL expired. This new one seems very limited. Need to explore more--but I like his Hundreds Magic activity. History of collaboration with Brad Fulton.)
Duncan Melville on Mesopotamian Mathematics
Jill Britton - Geometry, Topology, Escher lesson, etc.
AnnMarie Thomas - Making Makers
Andrew Stadel - This links to his home page, which in turn links to Estimation 180
Robert Kaplinsky - PD provider for math teachers. One of my favorites.
Math For Love - Math games and lesson plans
Keith Devlin: Devlin’s Angle and his personal blog. In Fall 2017, I spent time thinking about this piece about multiplication. He has an algebraist’s perspective. I agree with him in part.
Denise Gaskins - This links to her “game worth a thousand worksheets”, but it’s 1 click to home.
Pam Sorooshian - Dice
Kalid Azad at BetterExplained.com. This one’s about how to count.
Math With Bad Drawings see piece on Black Boxes
Nicora Placa - This piece has to do with a “cross multiply” algorithm vs. sense making
Alice Keeler - Playsheets, Game-Based Learning, and Gamification
MathMistakes.org - See, submit, and discuss misconceptions/confusion. Rich potential here.
Aditi Rao - Using technology vs. technology integration
Chris Shore - Common Core Pathways
Cult of Pedagogy - Blog; videos about instructions techniques; etc.
Marilyn Burns (see also her Nine Ways to Catch Kids Up)
Brian Bushart - This one is about poorly built strip diagrams.
David Cox - This one is about getting students to ask the next question a teacher would ask
Chase Orton - This one is about how practice gets results.
Jonathan Crabtree - The Lost Logic of Elementary Mathematics.
Which One Doesn’t Belong - A neat take on classifying math objects. Hint: any of the four objects could be the one; the key is in justifying your choice. A twist I just invented: describe and justify a rule that selects two of the four. For any set of four objects, there are six W2DB puzzles, as opposed to four W1DB puzzles. Haven’t tried this enough to decide if it’s an improvement.
Steve Wyborney - Splat, Esti-mysteries
Steven Strogatz columns: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Ilona Vashchyshyn: Logs and Reflections
MathGiraffe - This one is about introducing two-column proofs
Pam Harris - Love her multiplicative reasoning. I’m using her podcast with my math for future elementary teachers class, but not often enough. Two reasons to use it: (1) Problem Strings as an extension of Number Talks. Number Talks invite multiple solution strategies to the same problem; Problem Strings tie together related problems to help students see how strategies find diverse uses. But don’t take it from me. (2) Pedagogical method of not finishing everything. Halfway through podcast #20 I was looking for contact info so I could tell them (Pam and her cohost Kim Montague) about another method I was sure they’d love. Turns out the whole podcast was kind of a teaser ad for that method, and I took the bait hook, line, and sinker. That’s something I want to do for my students. Pam has workshops for teachers. They’re at least sometimes free. Her work is very exciting. (Pam learned about Problem Strings from Cathy Fosnot, who got them from the Netherlands.)
Craig Barton - Appears to argue for a teaching style that uses pattern recognition and pattern breaking to help students learn. This site looks resource-rich.
Tanya Khovanova and her Number Gossip ← This is pretty impressive.
KateLovesMath - A collection of essays on math topics.
Anna Stokke, Math Professor. This one links to articles and resources related to automaticity with math facts.
David Butler. This one links to his post about the Operation Tower, an improvement over PEMDAS, etc.
Activities and Classroom Resources
This is a new section and needs to be populated.
I’m starting with
Houghton Mifflin free learning resources. Is this called “Shaped”? I haven’t looked at them yet, but I want to.
Videos and Youtubers
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** Indicates links that I think will be of particular interest to beginning calculus students
Dimensions-Math (Neat videos about geometry, the complex plane, map projections, the fourth dimension, etc.)
Mathologer - This one (“The 3-4-7 Miracle”) includes a connection to the Coin Rotation Paradox.
Harvested from comments there: Kieran Clancy’s Star Animation.
3Blue1Brown - Here’s one about logs, exponents, and radicals. Here’s one about spirals and the distribution of primes.
Think Twice - Math animations (visual proofs of summation formulas, etc.)
Nature By Numbers - Beautiful video by Cristóbal Vila
Presh Talwalkar / Mind Your Decisions - Math puzzles and solutions
Vsauce - Get ready for random neat math/physics stuff.
Albert Bartlett on the Exponential Function and the end of the world
Mathematigal on fear
Vi Hart - Turduckenenduckenen.
DaveHax - Freehand perfect circle.
** PatrickJMT - Lots of math lessons.
Looking Glass Universe - Her origin story
** NancyPi - Algebra and Calculus help from an MIT graduate. (Formerly MathBFF, where there are still two videos related to linear algebra.)
Tibees - Physics exam unboxing? How fun!
PhysicsGirl - Physics, naturally.
Simone’s Robots - Physics
** Derek Owens - Math
James Tanton: On Dividing by Zero; Synthetic Division; Logarithms
Tarek Said - The History of the Natural Logarithm
MMDB - Mathematical Movie Database
Annenberg Learner - Videos, lessons plans, etc.
Graphing Stories - 15 second video clips that tell a story for students to graph
Mike’s Math Page - I’ve started doing this at home. It seems to start here. Err, no. Here?
The Math Forum at NCTM - This one is Max Ray-Riek, proving 2>4.
Hippocampus - Educational videos on various topics
Get The Math - a collection of videos and associated activities at thirteen.org
Mashup Math - A youtube channel targeting K-12 students with visual math lessons
** Professor Dave Explains - Chem, Bio, Physics, Math. Intro video makes bold claims; I hope he can deliver!
Sherry Parrish on Number Talks.
** Krista King - She has 50 vids on applications of the derivative?!
** Jeff Suzuki - Math instructional videos. Very clean/precise use of language. I’ve caught lots of little mistakes in many other youtubers’ videos, but not Suzuki’s. He’s a model for saying what you mean, and meaning something true.
** CalcVids - Calculus Videos. (Wouldn’t have guessed from the name, right?)
Gilbert Strang - The Highlights of Calculus (at MIT OCW)
MathIsPower4U - Range of topics: elementary through differential equations; Common Core; TI tutorials; some applications to careers; SAT.
Eddie Woo - Here’s a classic visual proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, but this version is noteworthy because of his pronunciation of “know”.
Admiral McRaven’s 10 lessons from SEAL training - how to change the world
Veritasium - The Science of Thinking
Jeff Chasnov - Deep Dive Math (applied math)
Action Lab - A Computer That Runs on Marbles
AndyMath - Focus on 8th grade through calculus. Chill demeanor.
Dan Wolczuk - Page of resources (including videos) on learning how to learn. First one gives a nice explanation of Bloom’s Taxonomy and why success in high school doesn’t always translate into success in college.
Podcasts
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(I don’t listen to enough podcasts. If you’ve got a good one to suggest, drop a comment.)
Higher Ed Rewired - by the CSU
Math Is Figure-Out-Able - by Pam Harris and Kim Montague (see longer blurb under Bloggers, etc.)
Odds and Evenings - A podcast on math, puzzles, and games. This links to their podcast on Stitcher. It’s available on other services, but their actual website threw a certificate alarm on my anti-virus. (Thanks, Bodhi)
TeachingMathTeaching - I just found out about this one in Jan 2022. (Thanks, John Brown)
Debate Math Podcast - Exploring arguments in mathematics (Thanks, Kathy H)
Chalk & Talk with Anna Stokke. Math Ed focus. Judging by the episode titles, this may present a valuable counterpoint to many of the other resources in this list.
CSET related
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Free [downloadable] Mathematics CSET Study Guides
Free on-line tutorials: http:// www.CALCRED.com
Jay Ramaswamy’s eccentric but largely free CSET prep site
https://rfdr266.wixsite.com/matheducation
Fresno State (in the California State University system) has some online workshops to prepare people for CSET and other exams. Their MSTI page. See the bottom of this page.
Math and Art
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National Museum of Mathematics - Physically in NYC, but has online exhibits/activities as well
Simon Beck Mathematical snow art by a master orienteer
MathCraft - Math meets art.
Vi Hart - Turduckenenduckenen. Peace for Triple Piano.
DaveHax - Freehand perfect circle
Bret Victor - Thoughts on computers as an art medium. Direct manipulation vs. coding.
North Coast Arts Integration Project
Mr. Hoenigman - Equation Art Project
Education Closet - K12 Arts Integration and STEAM Supplement. Big paywall, but some free samples.
Mathematical handicrafts (English and German)
Tessellation stuff: Tessellations.org, Alain Nicolas, slu.edu,
Jazza: What can I draw using only circles? (Language advisory)
Vince Matsko - Creating Fractals (and blog)
John Golden - Several art-oriented geogebra resources (etc.)
Erik Demaine Curved Crease Gallery see also Simple Fold and Cut Font
Bridges
Juan Carlos Ponce Compuzano: Art and Animations in Geogebra
Lucas Vieira technical illustrations for Wikipedia
Grant Sanderson (3B1B) and his parody of Hallelujah
Math and Language Arts
Put stuff here.
Anno’s books.
Hidden figures.
Math and Movement
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I need to link to something by Heather Gaiera and Bill Funkhouser.
James Tanton and Bo Outlaw - Practicing an open mind
Math and the Outdoors
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Simon Beck Mathematical snow art by a master orienteer
Field Guide to Math in Humboldt County
I haven’t found the math angle at Virtual Tidepooling yet, but maybe there is one.
Math History
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Duncan Melville on Mesopotamian Mathematics
Euleriana, a peer-reviewed eJournal focused on Leonhard Euler and Euler-related scholarship
Jeff Miller’s pages about the earliest known use of various notation
Math IRL
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Get The Math - a collection of videos and associated activities at thirteen.org
The Futures Channel - Mini-documentaries about STEM careers.
Star talk - In this one, Neil and Chuck discuss weight loss, mass, weight, density, physics units, heavy cream, and warships.
Open Texts
Euclid’s Elements, modernized by David Joyce
Open Up Resources by the Illustrative Mathematics people. Must inspect.
Openstax
School Mathematics from an Advanced Viewpoint by Usiskin, Peressini, Marchisotto, and Stanley
Tutorial Sites
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PurpleMath - Lots of tutorials
CRLA - Certification for tutor training programs
MathPlanet - High school
CSAcademy.com - Computer programming tutorials and challenges. Linked here: an app they have for representing graphs (in the graph theory sense, not the graphing calculator sense).
Khan Academy - Video lessons, assessments, and individualized content map, couched in game-like context. Student tracking tools for teachers. In terms of instructional balance, KA shows a strong procedural bias.
Resources For Which I Don’t Have a Good Label or That I Just Haven’t Sorted Yet
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Pace University Digital Commons - Links to sample differentiated instruction lesson plans
DeafTEC STEM ASL Video Dictionary
Indexed - Index card humor, usually involving Venn diagrams or other mathy representations
EquatIO - Chrome extension and math interface. The good: it seems to accept input in a variety of forms: mousey (like Word), text (like LaTeX), handwriting, and speech. The bad: looks like they recently moved from free to paid, ruffling some feathers in the process.
Elementary number Talks Resource Page
Byrdseed.com - Mathematical Curiosities
http://iheartintelligence.com/2014/01/18/beat-the-system-40-free-educational-websites/ - Maybe more college-oriented?
CS Unplugged - Free computer science curriculum for kids. Dazzling list of topics.
Mathlanding.org - Math stuff for elementary teachers
Underground Mathematics - Subway-style map of content from numbers to calculus
Royce Kimmons’ PICRAT matrix - Something to frame thinking about tech integration
SAMR model in 120 seconds - Short video intro to a way of thinking about tech integration
Nix the Tricks - A compilation of what not to do
Moviesheets.com - ideas for getting the most out of math-themed films your students watch.
Tom Davis’s page - This part has nice stuff for math circles.
Sciencing.com - Interplay between math, science, and engineering.
MegCraig.org - This one has to do with polar graphing.
http://www.mathematicshed.com/warm-up-shed.html
Robert Ghrist - Author of Elementary Applied Topology
I wonder whether “point and call” can be modified to help students track variables while solving equation.
Mathlinks - I need to visit.
MathMemos - CollectEdNY community for discussing problem solving. Includes student work samples. Could be a good resource to use with methods students.
Pascal's Triangle at protonstalk.com
Puzzles and Games
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MathZone - a UK-based site with several short computation puzzles. Motivated me to make this.
The Puzzle Toad - These seem hard.
Stella’s Stunners - May be a temporary home.
Logicville.com - I went there for the doublets.
Math Pickle - Add this to the list of things I want to do at home with my kids.
Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection - 40 puzzle families, multi-platform. A personal favorite–I've probably played this more than any other game. I've used this in classrooms.
Project Euler - Challenges that blend math and programming.
Prodigy - This actually links to their list of classroom management strategies, but their main product appears to be a math practice computer game for use in or out of class. I have seen only a little game play (no more than an hour), but at the moment I have the following questions: which students benefit from this? (More to the point: for those students with a pattern of doing poorly in math battles, what will they learn about themselves?) Does the game promote the image of mathematics as being primarily procedural? (It seems to.) To what extent does the fantasy context distract from the mathematics? In short, I have some concerns. (My daughter recommends it, but I don’t think she’s concerned with its merits as a tool for learning math.) Update: recently both of my kids have been enjoying this. My son (7) is unreasonably excited to play it, and my daughter (12) who had set it aside for a while is picking it up again. I still have some quibbles, but the expression “the perfect is the enemy of the good” comes to mind.
Dragonbox - Here’s a family of apps that I apparently knew about long ago, just long enough to recommend it to another mathematician. They liked it and said it helped their child. My kids are old enough to use it now. Paid product, available on iOS and Android.
Geometrygames.org - Jeff Weeks’ collection of about a dozen free geometry and topology programs.
Dr. Mike’s Math Games for Kids - Pretty accurate title, I’d say.
Math Card Trick (Final Three) - Even though I know why this works, I think viewers are likely to be more engaged in the thinking if it is posed as in this video. How can I extend that method to other areas? How dishonest am I willing to be in order to get someone to think? (Maybe the magic trick context excuses all subterfuge.)
Mathematical handicrafts (English and German)
Crux Mathematicorum - Free online journal. (I hear that students can publish here.) Great source of interesting problems.
Mathigon - puzzle calendars. I like what I’ve been seeing here.
Wordle (and the 3B1B video)
Conceptispuzzles - This links to the “Block-a-pix” game, which is a variation on the game “Rectangles” in Simon Tatham’s collection linked above. They have other puzzles.
Some games mentioned in an Incubator meeting: Dudo, My City, Patchwork, Hanabi, Hex, Abalone, Swish, Socks, Codenames.
Offline game: Shut The Box
[Add links to mathy card games]
Great Puzzle Hunt at Western Washington University. Annually, in mid-April? In person and virtual.
Josh Watson’s List of Math Games that avoid “chocolate covered broccoli”
Jane Street puzzles page (their site is mostly not about puzzles, but this page has good ones)
MathEqualsLove page on puzzles by Naoki Inaba (This page is in English, but it references Inaba’s page which is in Japanese.) Other Japanese logic puzzles there. Bunch of nice geometry puzzles.
Magic bag of gold puzzle (YouTube, 5:08)
Rules for Shut The Box (wiki). Can use dominoes. There are many variations…why not ask students to come up with a variation of their own? (Involve operations other than addition? Would nonstandard dice improve this?)
Catch-Up [applet missing, but you can use Cuisenaire rods] and analysis
Number Grid Tic-Tac-Toe by Joe Schwartz
Rullo - Remove numbers or operations from a grid to make all the rows and columns work out.
Karen Campe post, Puzzle Pastimes, discussing several math questions that can arise in a jigsaw puzzle context. Includes links to more mathy puzzles.
Matchmaker, a game to build comfort with addition and subtraction within 13.
Fact Freaks - Rapid practice with +-×÷. 1-minute drills, single player. I know this kind of activity is controversial in some circles, so I would like to share the following opinion with students. The purpose of playing this game isn’t to beat your friends or the world; it’s to improve your skills to the point that single digit arithmetic facts do not trip you up. I suspect that’s what the “full speed” mark on the speedometer represents. Being fast isn’t the point of math, just like it’s not the point of, say, reading a book aloud. However, if you’re trying to read aloud and you find yourself sounding out words and looking things up, that makes a frustrating experience for everyone. Likewise, if you are trying to solve a math problem of any kind and you rely on calculators or manipulatives to do what could reasonably be head math, you’re not going to have a great time. I love calculators and manipulatives for their purposes. The purpose of this game is something else, and I enjoy it for what it is.
Skills/Procedures
Khan Academy - Video lessons, assessments, and individualized content map, couched in game-like context. Student tracking tools for teachers. In terms of instructional balance, KA shows a strong procedural bias.
Food For Thought
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Dianne Ravitch on school reform (via Washington Post)
Timothy Gowers on the Language and Grammar of Mathematics
Edsger Dijkstra on why we should start at 0. Trim the URL to get his manuscripts.
Keith Devlin on what algebra is.
Sue VanHattum’s Top Ten Issues in Math Ed
80000 Hours. Clock’s ticking.
Josh Neubert: Ten Ways Competitions Enhance Learning
Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics at MathOverflow
Professional Development for Teachers
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Christina Tondevold, Build Math Minds
Online Seminar on Undergraduate Mathematics Education
Pam Harris - See details under Bloggers, above.
Profiles
Katherine Johnson, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on youtube and at NASA.
Fern Hunt, at Careergirls.org, which also has info on lots of careers and female role models in those careers.
Julia Robinson, at Science News. See also the Julia Robinson Math Festival.
Barbara Liskov, at her A.M. Turing award page and at ScientificWomen.net.
Kristopher Childs has profiles of Black mathematicians and Hispanic and Latinx STEM experts
Lathisms, which has information about Latinx and Hispanic contributions to mathematics
Production Resources
These are useful in building videos, handouts, activities, etc. (Back to Table of Contents)
Incompetech - Graph paper PDFs, but also royalty-free music, etc.
Bensound - More royalty-free music. Because apparently I’m getting into the business of making videos?
Hyperdocs - I’ve used Google apps for a little while in my teaching. Hyperdocs appears to be a way to increase student engagement within that context. Or maybe it’s advice for how to build a standalone digital lesson plan that students interact with directly. Hyperdoc samples and resources
Meagan Kelly - Road Trippin’ Hyperdoc
Career
O*Net for occupation searches
Holland Code (at Rogue Community College)
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook
Misc
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Ditutor.com - K-12 English/Spanish math dictionaries
One People One Reef - Ocean management and conservation policy from grassroots, not from on high. Can we learn from this approach to increase student buy-in in mathematics? This may involve asking students to make informed decisions about how they’ll learn a topic.
Eric Laithwaite: Magnetic River
Interactive Mathematics Program - I was hoping this page would show me some of their 4-year curriculum, but it seems more general than that.
What The Font - Identify a font by pasting a sample of it.
ThisXDoesNotExist - Not sure what this is useful for.
GetTheFactsOut - Teacher recruitment info
Not recommended
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Coolmath-Games. I have not done a thorough survey of the site, but when I looked I saw one poor implementation of what should be a really good card math game, as well as some “math games” in which the math was superficial or not obviously present at all. There may be some legitimately good math games there. Also, I have heard that the associated web page coolmath.com has useful things. If you think I should move this site into a happier part of my list, please leave a comment explaining why.
AAAMath.com - Looks mostly K-8. Time-driven procedural focus. That’s not necessarily bad, but ultimately I removed this link because the site features several things that I suspect are ads masquerading as the button to start the activity. Looks like an attempt to take advantage of naive internet users.