Digital technologies for learning mathematics

Last week I went to two events where the subject of programming came-up, and specifically how useful a tool it is for the learning of mathematics.  Essentially to be able to program a computer to perform a process you need to understand it first and also the process of thinking about how you would construct a program can help you to understand an idea. Project Euler At both events Project Euler was mentioned as a great resource/community to encourage people to learn maths through programming.  Michael Borcherds ( twitter.com/mike_geogebra ) suggested that I might be interested in it at the Computer Based Math summit: www.computerbasedmath.org/ .  Then a couple of days later Matt Parker ( twitter.com/standupmaths ) promoted it at MathsJam: mathsjam.com/ . Project Euler ( projecteuler.net/ )  is a series of  mathematical/computer programming problems that require some mathematical insight and a little bit of programming knowledge to solve.  However, an understanding of a FOR … NEXT

Many mathematics classrooms are installed with interactive whiteboards (IWBs); but I often get asked by teachers how they can use them to their full potential.  There is a lot more that can be done with an IWB other than displaying a static demonstration.  The Ofsted report of 2008 highlighted that the full potential of IWBs is not being capitalised on in Maths lessons: “... too often teachers used (IWBs) simply for PowerPoint presentations with no interaction by the pupils.” (see http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/node/2255 ).  I discussed some of the problems with PowerPoint in my previous post: “ What’s wrong with PowerPoint for Teaching Maths ”.  In spite of this there are some features of IWBs that make the particularly useful for teaching maths relating to the immediacy of dynamic software. The immediacy of dynamic software  When using an IWB the projector is (almost) always on therefore it is easy to use a piece of mathematical software for a small component of a larger lesson.  This i