I think that teachers are by nature control freaks (myself included). They want to be sure that learning is taking place and the only way that can happen is by delivering all of the information as a lecture style format. I can attest that this is not the best way to have your students learn. Do you like to sit all day and listen to someone lecture? I don't know about you but I have sat in many teacher trainings and doodled, written notes to the person next to me, and written my grocery or to do lists. Aren't kids the same way? We observe the glazed over looks on their faces and wonder, why aren't they getting this? Why do I have to continue to reteach this? Dear very smart teacher, they are BORED!!!! So what do you need to do as the teacher? Let go. It is hard, I know and I still struggle with it. Believe in your students. They know so much more than you think that they do. As you and your students become more comfortable with the questioning process and workshop model, your students will begin to question each other and they will deepen their learning.This is a good tricks to learn.
http://mental-maths-trick.blogspot.com
Games and activities can be found in many places. If your math series has games that your students play, this is a great place to add those in. Some commercially generated games work well also. Online computer games are an easy resource to use and your imagination as well. The more creative you are with your ideas, the more excited students will be in their engagement in the lesson and activities.
http://mental-maths-trick.blogspot.com/2011/10/do-super-quick-maths-calculation-using.html
The work in the Centre for Experimental and Constructive Mathematics is more than twenty years ahead of Mathematics as an international discipline. This has been inside information which might now be public.
There's a lot of nonsense said above (on both sides of the argument, if there is one) that I will not comment about. However there is a simple issue that needs no technical arguments. The current version, which Trovatore keeps reverting to, starts: "Many philosophers believe that mathematics is not experimentally falsifiable, and thus not a science according to the definition of Karl Popper." I think all mathematicians would agree that mathematics is not experimentally falsifiable; it is hard to imagine how an experiment could falsify mathematics. It is quite conceivable that mathematics, or some part of it, will one day be found to be inconsistent (remember Russell's paradox?), but if it happens, it will have nothing to do with experiment. The universe has been found to not be a Euclidean space, but that does not affect the work of Euclid (which is not entirely rigorous anyway, but that is another issue) any more than it affects hyperbolic geometry (which does not model the universe either). I'm unsure what Popper actually though about mathematics (his WP article does not mention mathematics as subject at all), but I think falsifiability can only be taken to characterize empirical science, which mathematics simply isn't. As an aside, it would be more interesting to know if many philosophers believe that philosophical theories are experimentally falsifiable. But I digress.
http://blossomed.blogspot.com/2014/10/mental-math-tricks-to-get-answer-in.html
Here's the main reason I like it better: The current version pretends to be a demarcation. It lists four (vague) things; those are mathematics, nothing else is. As I argue above, that cannot possibly meet NPOV. The Feb 2009 version does not; rather, it lists some of the things that mathematics studies, without claiming to exhaust the subject.
http://mental-maths-trick.blogspot.com/2014/10/math-games-for-4th-grade-kids-which-is.html
When a computer creates an image using the Mandelbrot formula, it tests a vast number of complex numbers (in the example above the complex number component of c was null). It then colours the numbers according to whether it is in the set.
If you're not good at math to begin with -- no, if you're absolutely horrible at math to begin with, then Florida Virtual School may probably just make things even worse for you. Yes, you get to work at your own pace and there are usually even study sessions with teachers to learn whatever lesson you're on, but it really doesn't make it much easier.
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