Number Loving Loves…

Valentine’s Day is the time to acknowledge those things you love and couldn’t live (or teach) without, so here are my top ten teaching crushes…

1) @taylorda01 and his blog to infinity and beyond

2) @mrbartonmaths and his fabulous website mrbartonmaths.com do follow him on twitter as every day he recommends a brilliant resource of the day (ROTD – wonder where he thought up that acronym(!))

3) @mrprcollins and his really interesting blog reflective journal 

4) @ColleenYoung and her amazing blog mathematics learning and web 2.0

5) William Emeny’s blog great maths teaching ideas

6) @riley_ed and his blog new tech timeline, check out his most recent post about manga high

7) @mrbuckton4maths and his YouTube channel past paper solutions, also check out his tes page for over 1,000 quality resources

8) @reflectivemaths aka Dave Gale and his blog reflective maths teacher

9) @Mr_BRouse and his blog Ben Rouse has some really interesting thoughts and resources for use of technology in the classroom

10) Time for some shameless self promotion, @laurareeshughes and @numberloving, follow us for updates on the blog and news on the new resource site which will be up and running next month!

If you are not signed up to twitter then I would really recommend it, it is a great forum to find new ideas and inspirational teachers to follow. Tips for beginners here.

Get in touch @numberloving and check out our free and premium resources in our NumberLoving Store.

Mobile Phones – Friend not foe

Granted, the presence of mobile phones can be a problem in many classrooms, but  the fact that every student has such a powerful piece of equipment in their pocket should be overlooked at your peril!

The app store is a maths teachers dream with all sorts of fantastic little resources such as compasses for when you teach bearings, reaction time testers for ordering decimals and revision quizzes for KS4. Go on and have a look, you will be inspired.

Amongst all the apps one of the greatest has to be the QR code scanner. You see these little codes popping up all over the place. You scan the code using the app and could be sent some text, a picture, or you may be directed to a webpage.

One of the best generators can be found here . It’s free to use, so you just select what you want to happen when it is scanned and hey presto you’ve got a QR code, the colours can be changed too which is a nice touch.  So, how can these be used in the classroom? Well the presentation beneath should answer that question!

[slideshare id=8055885&doc=qrcode-110521201458-phpapp02]

Get onto Prezi.com! Present & Collaborate

If you haven’t yet got onto Prezi.com “The zooming presentation tool”, you simply must. Presenting using Prezi is a great way of wooing your colleagues and impressing pupils, and the more recent developments with this free software means it is even more fabulous and your presentation really will sparkle.

Have a look at my latest Prezi, used to deliver inset to Science staff about the differences between graphs in Mathematics and Science. Feedback welcome on this, as huge discussions took place around both terminology and the use of a line of best fit v fitting a curve or joining the dots.

Prezi is free online software, it is fairly intuitive software which you and your pupils can explore as you learn. Videos and photos can be uploaded and embedded into the presentation, a path is then made to link each element into a smooth presentation. In addition to the fact that more than one person can be editing, or viewing each Prezi at anyone time, presentations can now be made online.

The possibilities are endless! Definitely worth a trial, if you find this is useful please leave your comments and share the sparkle. Get in touch @numberloving