Online Teaching Tools for Math Teachers

You must be looking for online teaching tools for teachers or math online apps or online teaching tools for math teachers. Then I would like to let you know that this article is going to help you a lot in making decision of which tools you should use to help your students with their learning especially in math.

In this article, we have compiled a list of the top online teaching tools for math teachers. Math teachers looking for innovative ways to engage their classrooms can take advantage of these online teaching tools and resources, many of which are free. Check out this list of online math teaching tools from Interactive Whiteboards, Flipcharts and Video Charts, Virtual Manipulatives and Games, Online Math Resources, Student Math Tools and more.

  Math is considered as the most challenging subject. But have you ever thought that teaching math becomes convenient with the help of online teaching tools for math teachers? Precisely, there are numerous online teaching tools available for math teachers to make learning easier and more convenient for their students. These online tools are also beneficial to teach math anywhere from home, school or on the move even during traveling.

If you already teach online or want to start online business, you will need the best online tools for teaching math. These are the most effective online resources that many famous math teachers recommend to their students and colleagues.

Websites For Teaching Math Online

 Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a completely free personalized learning resource with online courses, videos, and exercises. Students can complete daily reviews and keep track of their progress within the platform’s learning dashboard. The math tutorials are categorized by subject and by grade level for easy navigation and utilize specialized content—with the help of organizations like NASA, California Academy of Sciences, and The Museum of Modern Art—to bring the lessons to life.

What teachers love: Practice problems provide hints one step at a time, so students can get help when they’re stuck at a specific point, but don’t necessarily need help with the entire problem. This allows them to work things out for themselves and learn at their own pace.

Grade levels: K-12; secondary

IXL

While IXL is a subscription-based learning site, it does offer free daily math practice problems. Students can complete ten free questions (in each subject) per day and grow their math skills. The subscription membership includes unlimited practice questions, analytics, certificates, and personalized skill recommendations.

What teachers love: If a student gets a problem incorrect, the program shows all the steps to complete the problem so they can see where they went wrong and learn from their mistakes.

Math is Fun

Just as the name implies, Math is Fun aims to make math enjoyable and entertaining. The site uses puzzles, games, quizzes, worksheets, and a forum to help guide students through their learning.

What teachers love: The problems and solutions are all explained in simple language, making it easier for students to learn on their own without the necessity of an adult or teacher to “translate.”

Grade levels: K-12

Wolfram MathWorld

MathWorld is a free online resource for everything related to mathematics. The site includes interactive GIFs and demonstrations, downloadable notebooks, and “capsule summaries” for various math terms. Students can explore more than 13,000 entries to strengthen their math foundation and build up their understanding.

What teachers love: The site allows older and more advanced students to really dig deep into mathematics, with topics and articles in several different math-related subjects for a variety of background and ability levels.

Art of Problem Solving

With the Art of Problem Solving, students have three different avenues to get help and resources related to math. The Online School is a gateway for students to enroll in additional math classes and AoPS’ Bookstore offers challenging, in-depth textbooks so students can further explore the subject.

What teachers love: Students can challenge themselves to dig deeper into the math subjects they find fascinating through moderated message boards, games, and articles.

Grade levels: 2-12

MATH SKILLS PRACTICE

A number of math apps and online tools can help students develop the necessary foundational understanding of arithmetic operations they’ll need as a baseline for more challenging math problems later on, math teachers told us.

To help younger students practice skills like counting, addition, and subtraction, Ashley Blackwelder, an elementary STEAM coordinator in South Carolina, highly recommends Moose Math, a free app for iPhones and iPads. In Moose Math, students play math games that earn them points to help build a town. Blackwelder says the format is easy for kids to navigate and great for short attention spans.

Curriculum and instructional designer Cassie Tabrizi recommended Happy Numbers (pre-K–grade 5), a subscription-based website ($14.50 per student or $1,450 per site for first-time schools) that breaks down mathematical equations to help students build understanding of higher-order math concepts. To use it, students transform into a dinosaur character and solve math problems to hatch dinosaur eggs. Tabrizi said that the website is helpful, but she recommends using it in moderation: It can feel tedious for students if they practice longer than 10 minutes a day.

Students fight monsters in the persona of a wizard in Prodigy (grades 1–8), a free game-based website (also available as an app for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android). Prodigy is loved by kids, but less so by educators because it is more play based. Brittney Paige, a fifth-grade teacher in Seattle, says that even though it is more of a game, she likes that it automatically targets math concepts that students struggled with in its preassessment and tracks how much progress they make on target areas. Most teachers offer Prodigy as an option for students if they finish an assignment early.

Zearn (grades 1–5), a free, self-paced, web-based program aligned with Eureka Math—a free pre-K through 12 math curriculum—starts a typical lesson with fun warm-up activities, like adding up how many apples a cartoon fox eats, to engage students. As they work through the program, students complete timed arithmetic problems, watch instructional videos on new concepts, and solve practice problems. Shannon McGrath, an instructional coach in Western Springs, Illinois, says that Zearn is good “high-level, conceptual practice” and gives good feedback for both teachers and students, but can sometimes progress too slowly for kids who master concepts quickly.

OPEN MATH TASKS

Open math tasks—problems that typically have more than one answer—help students develop a conceptual understanding of math rather than get hung up on memorizing facts, said math educators we talked to, who consistently mentioned three free websites to use for open math tasks.

Open Middle (pre-K–grade 12) leaves parts of an equation blank and asks students to fill them in to make it true. “I love Open Middle for remote learning, especially paired with a Google Jamboard,” says McGrath. “The problems inspire inquiry thinking, gamelike play, creativity, and perseverance.”

A set of four graphs from the website Which One Doesn't Belong?

Courtesy of Mary Bourassa/Which One Doesn’t BelongUsing “Which One Doesn’t Belong?” Mary Bourassa’s calculus students make a mathematical argument why each graph is the odd one out.

McGrath also likes Would You Rather Math (pre-K–grade 12) for community building. When using the site, students choose between two real-life examples—like a box of chocolates with five rows and 14 columns or a box of chocolates with seven rows and nine columns—and have to make a mathematical argument to validate their choice.

Which One Doesn’t Belong? (pre-K–grade 12), a similar site, showcases four shapes, numbers, or graphs and asks students to describe which one doesn’t belong, using math vocabulary. “This is great for opening a synchronous discussion, as it is considered a low-floor, high-ceiling task,” says Joseph Manfre, a math specialist for the Hawaii Department of Education. High school math teacher Mary Bourassa has her calculus students identify reasons why each graph in a set of four doesn’t belong by indicating graph characteristics like asymptotes and non-differentiable points, and later has her students create their own WODB sets.

GeoGebra

GeoGebra is a dynamic mathematical software program. It is made for every level of education, from beginner to expert. This app combines geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphs, statistics and analysis, calculus in one user-friendly package. The community of GeoGebra is expanding very fast and has millions of users worldwide. They are the number one provider of dynamic mathematical software all over the world.

Geometry Pad

Geometry Pad offers a fun way to learn geometry and practice important constructions. It’s your personal assistant in learning geometry. Students can easily present their geometric constructions, take measurements, use the compass and experiment with a lot of different geometric shapes.

This app can be compared to the math tool GeoGebra above, and is designed for usage on iPads and Tablets specifically. Today’s students know very well how to use an iPad or tablet; perhaps teachers can learn something from them too?

Photomath

To learn math, and to take the frustration out of math and to bring more peace to a student’s (and teacher’s) life, use the Photomath app. This app will help you understand mathematical problems with content to improve your math skills. Every month they solve and explain more than 1 million math problems. By scanning your math problem, this app will help you instantly with solving it. You can do this by using the camera on your mobile device. After it found out what your math problem is, the app gives you a step-by-step explanation. Photomath explains you the calculation steps with animations just like a teacher would do, in real life!

Simulation Tools

According to math teachers, simulations, like manipulating an expression and seeing a change in a graph, are great tools to help students visualize math concepts.

An SEL graphing assignment check-in with Desmos

Courtesy of Ashley TaplinAshley Taplin, a secondary math specialist, had her students graph how they felt during the first week of distance learning.

Applets

A simple code with a specific objective—were mentioned by a few teachers as a good resource. Emma Chiappetta’s statistics students use applets from RossmanChance.com to manipulate and identify sampling distribution patterns in graphs, for example. She creates a basic guide on how to use the applet with which values to change, and then asks questions to get students thinking critically about those patterns. Chiappetta also uses applets from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her linear algebra students.

Desmos (grades 6–12)

A website with interactive math activities and a graphing calculator (also available as an app on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android), is another free tool and a favorite among teachers, we heard. While social and emotional learning (SEL) and math may not seem to go hand in hand, teachers integrated SEL into math lessons using Desmos. In the first week of distance learning, Ashley Taplin, a secondary math specialist in San Antonio, Texas, had her students graph how they were feeling, for example. Taplin says she particularly loves that teachers can make their own activities—like this one about parabolas and this card sort, where students match cards with the name, corresponding equation, and correct graphical representation of a function.

Conclusion

When looking for online teaching tools, we need to be concerned that they fulfil our requirements as teachers, as well as the demands of the students. The best way to identify learning apps is to ask students which apps they use, or ask colleagues who teach at other schools in your district.

Teaching math online can be challenging. You want your students to grasp complex concepts, yet you also need to keep them engaged. One way to do this is with math and science teacher tools such as Versatiles, whiteboards, and counters.

Leave a Comment