Math....ahhh....sigh.....

     I will admit it.  I was never very good at math when I was in school.  Over time, and lots of practice, I have gotten much better.  But for the longest time Math and I did not have a good relationship with each other.  We were more like bickering siblings looking to do something not so nice to each other.  Perhaps it was how it was presented to me, or that my mind just didn't take in the cold, hard math facts that were fed to me straight from my textbook.  I do know that there are many new and exciting tools out there now that will help teachers present math in new ways that will help all types of learners succeed.
     Being able to actually work with numbers and charts as a class might be one way to really help students understand how to create charts and to know which charts should be used for different types of data.  Chartle is a website that allows you to create charts for free online.  This would be a great site to access and do a large class instruction on how to create different types of charts.  You could do a class poll right there on the spot and then take those poll results and create a chart that gives that visual representation right there on the screen.  You can make all sorts of charts on this site.  It is also a good site to remember for other classes because there are Venn diagrams and organizational charts.
     One website that my students beg me to let them use in the computer lab on their free day is CoolMath.  This site has a great deal of fun math games that the students apparently like to play.  My philosophy on that is that if it isn't broken don't twist it and break it!  Just kidding!  When you find a website that has educational games on it that students actually enjoy and that they try to do the work I think that you should use it.  It is free too!
     Another easy graph site is Create A Graph.  This site also looks easy to use and one that you don't have to sign up to use.  You can just go to the site and choose the type of graph you want to create and then add the data in.  You can choose the colors in your graph as well.
     I know that many teachers give timed math tests.  I found a neat little tool called Egg Timer where you can go to the site and put in the time and it will do a visual countdown.  That way if students need to know how much time they have left to complete the task, they can see it up on the projection area.  Simple to use!
     There are also a huge amount of flashcard sites out there.  Some of them require a log in name.  I will make a list later of some flashcard sites that are easy to use.