Web Tools

This week we were asked to look at a list of web tools we could use in our classrooms to enhance our teaching practice, or to make life easier for our students. A lot of the items on the list of web tools are things I've used in the past to varying degrees. But I wanted to focus this post on a couple of things that weren't on the list. 

As a math teacher, one of my favorite web sites is Khan Academy. Sal Khan created Khan Academy and the website has evolved over the years to now include basically anything a kid could ever need to pass any math class. I've mostly used the site's videos as a form of flipping my classroom. A lot of the topics I cover in Algebra are presented the same way in his videos, so I use them from time to time. Khan Academy also has practice problems associated with each video so the students can practice the concepts just covered in the video they watched. 

The videos on Khan Academy are basically YouTube videos. In my AP Statistics class this year, most of the kids have struggled to adapt to the higher level of work. One of them (you know, instead of just reading the book) searched on YouTube for videos about the content. He came in to class the next day raving about "mathmanbillg" who apparently is an AP Stats teacher. He told me the videos made the concepts really clear to him, so I showed the video to the class and they thought it was "ehh, ok". They can never just admit when something's cool, right? I'm hopeful that the class will use these kinds of tutorial videos as a supplement to their learning if reading the book isn't clear enough to them. Here's one of the statistics video's from mathmanbillg: