Academic Software: Tutorials and Drill-and-Practice

Academic software is readily available to most all math classes in the form of tutorials and drill-and-practice. The high school math departments across Texas purchased new textbooks in the 2007–2008 school year. I was allowed to preview textbooks that had been adopted by the Texas Education Agency and was amazed by the amount of digital resources available with each textbook. I am currently using a Houghton Mifflin precalculus book for example. It has a free companion web site available to all students found at http://college.cengage.com/mathematics/larson/precalculus_limits/1e/student_home.html that has a general resources link containing note-taking pages for every section of every chapter in the textbook that students can use to follow along with my lectures and/or the textbook to help them summarize the section. Another useful tool found under the general resources link is the math graphs link. This link allows you to print graphs that are contained in the exercises so that you can be more precise when sketching your answers. Sometimes I print these out for the students to use in class as well as the note-taking pages if I deem it necessary.

The site also allows you to navigate by chapter to find interactive flash card tutorials that will test your knowledge after you have reviewed the chapter key words. You can add to the given list of flash cards and print them if you wish. When navigating by chapter, you can also choose the “Ace the Test” link which has interactive quizzes for every section of the textbook. Immediate feedback is given as to whether or not you have answered correctly.

The most popular textbook resource for my students is found at http://www.calcchat.com/. The students can go to this site and see step-by-step solutions for every odd numbered question in the textbook - free! As a teacher, we have to be careful about assigning only odd problems! My students have found that if they get stuck on problem 30, usually problem 29 or 31 are similar enough that they can figure out how to work number 30 by looking at the solutions to 29 and/or 31.

When I was looking for the perfect precalculus book, I did not select it based on these student resources. This text can be used at the college level and my goal was college-prep. The high school textbook sites had even more tutorials and games for students to use. They seemed to be a little more entertaining for students. I am guessing that time is the biggest issue as to whether or not these tutorials and drill-and-practice resources get used in the classroom, but interested students can easily access them from home.

Comments

  1. Cinda BoshartFebruary 24, 2009 at 9:09 PM

    Tina, I think this is amazing. Our new 6th grade math books have online resources, as well. Is that just a standard in textbooks these days? I doubt I would have used it as a 6th grader, but I'm sure I would have at the middle school and high school levels.

    Cinda

    ReplyDelete
  2. TinaMoFebruary 25, 2009 at 12:03 AM

    Well Cinda, I was amazed at the amount of online resources. It is almost as if the textbook companies were trying to out-do one another. I even have the textbook on a CD and DVD's that show videos of a man teaching every section in both my Precal and Calculus textbooks. I use these when students are out for a long time due to illness and such! They are very handy to have!
    Thanks for the response,
    Tina

    ReplyDelete

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