Getsmarter.org - Getsmarter.org is a fun and somewhat quirky site designed to be an interactive learning portal which allows students to pit their wits against their contemporaries worldwide. An initiative from the bizarrely named Council on Competitiveness, the site provides students, parents and teachers alike with a fun way of comparing science and math skills. Various practice quizzes culminate in 'The REAL Challenge', where you can compare your results against those of other students from around the world who answered the same questions as part of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study from 1995 to 1999. For those whose answers are exceptionally good, there is a chance to feature in the top 10! The colourful front page is engaging from the start, with animated, noisy bullets - and a cheery yodel when you click on the mountain peak link to The REAL Challenge section. The quizzes themselves are separated into elementary, middle and high school levels, with section names designed to appeal to the young, such as the Goo Laboratory, Math Safari and Math and Science Television. To access the quizzes themselves you do need to input some basic, impersonal information about yourself, presumably for the purpose of grading. However, this ensures that the site can provide you with a different set of questions if you return and complete the same quiz section more than once. Each question comes complete with some amusing animations and as you progress through each grade the level of questions and tone of the animations changes to suit each audience. The site has a section for parents and educators, and a survey section for feedback. There is also a students' page, including various good science, math and problem solving links, which are also sorted according to elementary, middle or high school level. A great resource for children, parents and educators alike - but more importantly, the kids will love it! Rating: 9 out of 10 (12 February 2003) LH
http://www.getsmarter.org/index.cfm
Coolmath.com - The mission of Coolmath.com is to make mathematics fun and the website succeeds admirably. Separate sections are aimed at kids, teenagers/adults, teachers and parents, with each designed to appeal to the targeted audience. For example, the kids section is very colourful with age appropriate interactive games, lessons, calculators, and puzzles. The sections aimed at the older age groups are more subdued in design and clearly explain concepts such as limits and exponentials. Parents can read articles about how to help and encourage their kids to learn, while teachers can find links to teaching resources and specific maths topics. The website maintainer is a maths teacher and even shares some of the tricks she uses in the classroom to make maths fun and easy. Too many kids thinks of maths as boring and hard to understand. Coolmath.com is an excellent way of showing them how maths works in a fun environment. Rating: 9 out of 10 (11 January 2003) KM
http://www.coolmath.com/
Number Patterns, Curves & Topology - If you enjoy math, are intrigued by puzzles, teach math at any level, or love to learn about the interconnections between math and other disciplines, this site is like a box of chocolates. Jill Britton has collected and annotated links to a wide range of mathematical topics from tangrams, fractals, mazes and cycloids to the abacus, cryptography, the mobius strip, and Fibonacci Numbers, along with a mathematical perspective on the map of the London Underground, and provides links to websites with text, illustrations, animations, interactive learning tools, audio and video clips. Her annotations are brief and helpful, and she has selected links that contribute to understanding the concepts. While this site lacks some of snappy, commercial graphic feel common on sites today, it has a beautifully clear and simple design with an Escher-like graphic background. It's only shortcomings are the lack of a table of contents and a search feature, as both would make browsing easier. I wish I had access to this site when I was teaching middle school mathematics because it would have helped me to create compelling and interesting examples for my students. Rating: 8 out of 10 (1 August 2002) CK
http://www.camosun.bc.ca/~jbritton/jbfunpatt.htm
Figure This! Math Challenges for Families - This colourful site presents maths challenges and brainteasers using cartoon characters to demonstrate the scenarios. Hints can be obtained to help solve the puzzles. The main disadvantage with this site is the graphics-intensive environment, which means that each page takes a long time to load. In fact, the slowness of this site is its downfall. Although there is plenty to investigate, the time it takes to load each screen will probably deter all but the most determined. However, it is possible to print the questions as PDFs, which may overcome this problem. It would also be helpful if the puzzles were listed in order of difficulty, as some questions are suitable for younger children, but some would tax most adults. However, despite these points, with some digging it is possible to find challenges suitable for most of the family. With a bit of work, this site could be wonderful, and a really useful tool, both in the classroom and at home. (3 January 2002) SC
http://www.figurethis.org/index40.htm
Do Math - Do Math is part of a larger project, funded by the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Education, called Figure This. It presents math challenges in the form of puzzles, for families to solve together. The puzzles are based on things to which children can relate, like their own birthdays, and maps. One of the puzzles uses the idea of a patio illustrate why a bigger perimeter means a bigger area. For each puzzle there is a follow-up page called 'Did you know,' that gives more detail and sometimes includes brief historical facts. This allows children to build on what the puzzle has just illustrated. The site will appeal to many age groups, as younger children may need to use all of the hints to find an answer, while older children will need fewer. The whole site can also be used in Spanish. This site is fun. It will help parents get more involved in their childrens' education, and it will make children see a math challenge as exciting. (29 September 2001) SS
http://www.domath.org/
Fermi Questions Library - If you don't know what a Fermi question is, and how to answer one, then you'll do no good at the village fete guessing the weight of the giant cupcake or the number of coins in the penny jar. There is no archetypal Fermi question but such questions as: 'How many piano tuners are there in New York City?' and 'How many jelly beans fill a one-litre jar?' are the kind of examples this site uses to illustrate their power. The answers one gets will usually provide an order of magnitude range within which the 'true' answer will lie. For instance, the site takes us through the former question, step by step - how many people in NYC, how many have a piano, how often do they have it tuned, how much work can a single piano tuner do? Etc etc. Their answer is 500. One might assume that there could be many more or far fewer, but certainly no more than 5000 and no less than 50. Of course, the serious application of Fermi questions is not to win prizes at village fetes or help tickle the ivories, but to help students understand how to estimate properties that are generally impossible to count precisely. A good starting point for using up all those spare envelope backs! (15 August 2001) DB
http://mathforum.org/workshops/sum96/interdis...
