[Educators] Now...Math???

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi Educators...

Ed posted a link to a really interesting book about trig, but it is more for someone who already knows trigonometry.  I'll hunt later today and see if I can find the "oldie-but-goodie" I found a few months ago.

A lot of the books and sites out there require an excellent teacher to make them useful.  We should look for things that will assist both students and teachers in the adventure that is learning mathematics.  Oscar Becerra filled us on the weak preparation of many of the teachers in Peru.  I imagine it is similar around the world (we had a lot of math-phobic teachers in LA...fortunately the secondary school level ones taught something else, but often in the elementary levels they had to teach it....probably resulted in a lot of math-phobic students!)

I looked at the stuff at einet.  Some of it is by subscription only, but others are free.

I found this wonderful algebra tutorial there.  Supposedly it is free, but it does have a copyright.  I wonder if they could be persuaded to let us do  translations post it as a reference for folks using sugar.  We would need someone to rewrite it into linux.  Actually, it would be great to package this in a group of Activities available for download.  I think it would be a real hit.

The graphics are excellent and the lessons are clear and easy to follow.  I can see students enjoying using and learning from this site.  Actually it seems to link to lot of other sites, some work on the XO, others don't.  Check out the Real Numbers section...cute!  And easy to understand:

http://stroh.homestead.com/algebrahelp.html

The format is messed up on my Mac and even more on the XO so it was probably written for Windows.  It also requires Flash to play...that would need to be changed.

This is exactly what I was hoping to find for Algebra.  I used to have a pre-graphics program similar to this one and the the students really enjoyed it and learned a lot.  Maybe some of the volunteer programmers could write something similar as a set of Activities for the XO.

I checked the Algebra I course at oercommons.  It would be difficult to use because it relies on a textbook for the readings and all of the lessons are in spoken English.  It would be better to start fresh than try to adapt this one.  However...some English speaking G1G1 donors might like to use it. I didn't try it on my XO.  It might need Flash.

I'll look at more later.

Caryl
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