Math Vids

Happy New Year! 2009 seems so unreal to me. Wasn’t it just 2000 a blink ago? So much changes in education and yet some things can always be counted on. One that I would like to chat about is math, a consistent and reliable subject that is taught in every school any where on the planet. I always loved teaching math because there’s not a whole lot of discussion about opinion and fact vs. fiction. Math is so logic and so dependable and it very appealing to teach because it’s so much fun to watch the light come one when a student gets it. Although the subject has undergone a few changes from when I was a student, it has been given a vast new set of resources through technology. This ‘tuesdays” I will take a look at only one of hundreds of websites that have given math teachers and students a whole new perspective for learning mathematics.

A creative website
As most of the nation begins to prepare for standardized testing, better math scores can be a challenging goal to meet. I was impressed to find a video driven math website, Math Vids, whose goal is to help change the way we think about education.. The vision of MathVids.com is to provide every student in the country with an equal opportunity to access high quality lessons on math topics ranging from middle school through college to improve mathematical literacy in the 21st century. I still find it amazing to watch students and teachers become silent as soon as a short video clip is used for instruction. SchoolVids has created a great resource for both students and teachers to help learners become better mathematicians by recognizing that we don’t all learn the same way. Students can hunt around for a teacher they can understand best and teachers can even upload instructional videos they have made. The FREE version is powerful, but for only $39.95 a year, you can have the ability to download resources, watch the videos full screen and even index them by the NCTM standards.

An image to share
I took this picture last year while visiting one of my teachers because it intrigued me. When I found the quote for this week, I finally knew why I saved the picture!

A proverb
“Black holes result from God dividing the universe by zero.” Author Unknown


An encouragement
Even if you are not a math teacher, all your students take mathematics. Why not introduce them to Math Vids? They can get extra practice or even take the challenge to try to learn higher level mathematics such as: calculus, differential equations, advanced algebra and more. Even if you are a math teacher, we all recognize that sometimes the students learn better from each other or another teacher. We can’t reach all of them, but there is definitely a teacher out there that will be a match for that struggling student who thinks they are just no good at math. Perhaps they haven’t met the right teacher yet. Searching the videos by topic will yield many different teachers. I could definitely see how you could develop favorite styles and then pay much more attention to the content as it becomes more and more understandable.


How do you do that?
To use Math Vids, you can just click play and watch the featured video on your own computer. There are some annoying little advertisements, but they can be closed. If you sign up for a FREE account, you are able to save your favorite videos for easy review and you can even choose the teachers that you like best and watch for their lessons. For teachers who really like these videos, you can pay the annual fee of $39.95 and you have upload and download capability and the ability to play the videos full screen in your classroom. I still see the most advantageous use is for students at their own home computer brushing up on topics that will help them remove the fear of math and raise those scores. What are some of your favorite math sites? Let’s us know in the comments below.

As always, I am
Ubiquitously yours,
K