Why Twitter?

Why would a teacher want to use Twitter?

Because just a few minutes spent on Twitter can be very productive. Take this tweet from Craig Barton on an excellent resource – perfect for my Year 11 students revising for their GCSE module in the summer.

Being very selective in who you follow allows you to connect with teachers and other educators beyond your own institution.
Look at the resources I discovered through my early investigations of Twitter –  a couple of great links from Maryna Badenhorst:
Maths posters to download and Brainbusters.

I was also interested to see from Teaching News that teachers on Twitter have shared teaching tips and ideas; see the #movemenon book, from Doug Belshaw (the pdf is free to download).

Some further examples:  Mathscareers Website,   Wolfram Fun Facts  and Mathslinks. 

For a quick way to find Mathematics related tweets do a search on any of these hashtags: #math #maths #mathchat.
You could even join a planned discussion – see the Mathchat wiki for details.

For learning to use Twitter see Russell Stannard’s training videos and some Twitter bookmarks.

So why do I use Twitter (and Diigo and belong to various teaching communities and..)?
For the reasons so well explained by Sacha Chua in her ‘Teacher’s Guide to Web 2.0 at School’.

Tarsia Puzzles

With the free Formulator Tarsia software from Hermitech Laboratory, it is possible to create puzzles, domino activities and rectangular card sorts. These work well with students of any age. Most of the published resources seem to be for students age 11 to 18 but as it is possible to create puzzles, teachers of younger students could create puzzles suitable for their classes.

The software can be downloaded from this link. Scroll down to the section headed Formulator Tarsia.

Note that as well as downloading the application it is possible to download selections of puzzles from Craig Barton and from Bryan Dye. Craig also has a section of his website devoted to Tarsia – note all the ideas here for using Tarsia in the classroom.
Further puzzles can be found on M Ladak’s MathedUp site (see the KS3 and KS4 pages for resources) and numerous resources from Mark McCourt’s Emaths site.

TES Resources host an extensive collection of Tarsia Puzzles.

Mathematics Games

I have many links to games and puzzles as I am sure all Mathematics teachers have.

In an attempt to organise these I have created another WordPress Blog – Mathematics Games.
Many of the games come from the always excellent NRICH site.

Further links will be added in future.