BJARP+-+Thoughts+and+Ideas

23/5 I've been thinking about how difficult I've found it to incorporate ICT into my maths classes at school and wondering why this is, given the technical nature of the process itself is not daunting due to my IT experience from my previous career. My initial idea is that the resources that are currently available do not 'fit' well with the way I'm teaching maths in the classroom, that it is not easy to incorporate them into the average class and therefore the effort to incorporate them outweighs the potential benefit of incorporating them. Have found out about www.mathsonline.com.au so will try that with the year 7s and see how I go.

23/5:EPS - Bruce, I use Mathletics quite successfully (I think) into the current curriculum as it blends quite well with the subject areas I teach but obviously being an online tool it allows students to learn in a manner outside the traditional classroom learning. I would suggest to keep using online Maths tools like Maths online or Mathletics as students tend to gravitate to this type of learning and probably helps a lot with individualised learning plans that can be set for students. Also, Mathletics for example allows teachers to easily print work booklets that can be handy.

27/5 BJARP - Yeah - I've heard mathletics is really good but we don't have it as an option here. They're looking into getting it for next year but I'm not crossing my fingers.

15/6 DNG - In support of Mathsonline, we also use Mathsbuddy.com.au. They are pretty much the primary school version of Mathsonline. We found out for some of our students who are struggling with the fundamentals of working out fractions, division, place values etc, we set out tasks for them to complete on Mathsbuddy and some of them (even in Year 9s!) seemed to be responding well in their learning. You might use to explore that as well.

15/9 BJARP - Well - after nearly 3 terms of trying to use IT within the curriculum I've come up with some hard and fast rules for it's successful deployment.

1) It's got to be quick to get up and running - anything that takes a long time to set up and use suffers from the 'aura of inertia' that seems to surround teaching.

2) It's got to be easy to learn how to use it (although this can be mitigated significantly through the use for tutorial videos but these take time to create)

3) It's got to be easy to continue using - I've had multiple stories from teachers who use blogging software other than the ultranet in their classes because of the clumsiness of the ultranet interface.