Bringing Mathematics to Life
Mathematics is commonly a subject that student engagement can be difficult to ensure and is certainly the cause of serious frustration to many students. Regardless of the constraints and difficulties of bringing a prescribed mathematics curriculum into a 21st century teaching and learning environment, there are ways to bring content to life and integrate technology into lessons very simply.
Word and OneNote Mathematics Add-In
With the Microsoft Mathematics Add-in for Word and OneNote, you can perform mathematical calculations and plot graphs in your Word documents and OneNote notebooks. The add-in also provides an extensive collection of mathematical symbols and structures to display clearly formatted mathematical expressions. You can also quickly insert commonly used expressions and math structures by using the Equation gallery.
If you're a math teacher or student, check out this video where you can see how to solve equations and plot graphs using the Mathematics Add-In with Microsoft Word 2010. Or download this free Mathematics add-in and see for yourself.
Microsoft Mathematics 4.0
Teachers often find it challenging to keep all their students at the same pace when learning new maths concepts. Microsoft Mathematics can help students visualise problems and provide extra help when they are reviewing maths concepts on their own.
From basic maths to calculus, it can help you visualise mathematical concepts in a new way. It’s a free downloadable tool which includes step-by-step instructions and explains fundamental concepts. The wide range of tools to help students with complex mathematics includes a full-featured graphing calculator that’s designed to work just like a hand-held calculator and ink handwriting support to recognise hand-written problems.
Includes a sophisticated graphing calculator
Microsoft Mathematics has a powerful graphing calculator built in. That saves each student the cost of buying a graphing calculator and assures that they all have access to the same necessary tools.
Microsoft Mathematics uses a Computer Algebra System (CAS) to help teachers share and solve more complex equations and functions. It’s capable of handling subjects including pre-algebra, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, physics and chemistry.
Helps students by stepping through problems
With its step-by-step approach to problem solving, Microsoft Mathematics shows the journey to the maths solution, not just the end point. For teachers, it’s like having a maths tutor available to their students when they get stuck on a problem. The step-by-step feature can help students improve their understanding of formulas and concepts as they do their homework.
It’s useful for subjects such as pre-algebra, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, physics and chemistry.
Where can I find out how to use it?
There’s a full Microsoft Mathematics Teachers Guide, as well as a Step-by-step Guide that talks you through the whole software.
Download Microsoft Mathematics from here.
Maths Worksheet Generator
Maths Worksheet Generator creates anything from one to 1,000 equations on a worksheet from a single sample equation you enter. And it also generates the teacher answer sheet too.
Do you spend a lot of time searching for worksheets with practice problems to give your students? Now you can easily create your own in just a few seconds with the Math Worksheet Generator. This is a tool that generates multiple math problems based on a sample, and then creates a worksheet that you can distribute. By analysing the math problem you provide, or one of the built-in samples, the generator determines the structure of the expression and provides similar problems.
Create quick maths worksheets in Word
The Math Worksheet Generator works best with Word 2007 and 2010. If you have that, then the tool creates a Word document and the expressions are editable. If you have an older version of Word, it still creates a document, but the expressions are small images that aren't editable. (This is because Word 2007 and higher has more built-in support for inserting Math equations.) If you don't have Word at all, the tool will create HTML versions of the worksheet and answer sheet.
The tool supports everything from basic arithmetic through algebra.
Where can I find out how to use it?
Here’s a demo of the Maths Worksheet Generator in use, which shows how easy it is to use. Just download the video here.