The 37th in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. This week we take a look at one of the excellent Autograph Extras pages. The Dice Simulation page is fantastic for allowing your students to explore the concepts of experimental probability, sample sizes and distributions. Below the video you will find an option to download it and play it on a larger screen, or by clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series.

The 17th in a series of videos where each week I visit my favourite mathematics websites. iTunes U is a feature of Apple’s iTunes service where universities and education providers from all over the world have uploaded complete courses, with videos, notes, homeworks, on a whole variety of subjects, all completely free. Mathematics is really well represented. Here we take a look at a Statistics course from Harvard, and then at an excellent series of puzzles from Cambridge called Quite Easily Done (QED). This is a fantastic resource with potential to help both teachers and students.

An Autograph Player activity designed to investigate the Trapezium Rule as a numerical form of integration. You can use this activity on the interactive whiteboard, or for your students to investigate on their own. Autograph does not need to be installed to use this activity (so your students can even use it at home), but you will need to install the free Autograph Player add-on (instructions given after clicking the link). For a full list of Autograph Activities, please click on the other web-link.

Census at School provides a gold mine full of rich, interesting, relevant data that can spice up any statistics based lessons. Don’t worry if you haven’t had chance to register your students, you can still access ten years’ worth of questionnaires and data. In this video we take a look at how you can easily grab a sample of 100 students’ responses to the question: what superpower would you most desire? This can then be instantly changed into a pie chart, bar chart or whatever you want to compare to your own students results. Amazing stuff!

A special edition of Mr Barton’s Gapminder World Video series. This is a video that I created especially for Oxfam’s water week, and it looks at the different levels of access to water for counties all over the world. Below the video you will find an option to download it and play it on a larger screen, or by clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series

Earliest recommended Year group: Year 10. Imagine you needed to remove one metre depth of topsoil from a new building plot. What volume does this represent? How many wagons will you need, etc? By approximating this area to a polygon (where you know the coordinates of the vertices) makes the task very easy (even easier with a spreadsheet). This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm

Data and Statistics are still burdened with the unfortunate reputation of being rather dull topics in maths. This I highly unfair, and there are few more important and relevant mathematical topics to the lives of students and the word around them. Previously we have looked at websites which can help bring statistics to life, and My Life in Numbers deserves to sit alongside those. Just wait until you see your students’ reaction to the number of heartbeats Justin Bieber has had, and how David Beckham’s earnings tick by quicker than the passing seconds.

The 24th in a series of videos where each week I visit my favourite mathematics websites. Numberphile is an amazing collection of quirky, interesting and inspirational mathematical videos. The topics covered are wide ranging to say the least, from the wonders of 1729, to birthdays, Googolplex and e. Here we take a look at a few of the videos and then talk about possible uses of the videos in the classroom, both to end a lesson in style or as the basis of a rich, practical project for students.

This website may well be unfamiliar to some of you, but it needs to go right to the top of your favourites list, because it is brilliant! There is a wealth of high-quality resources, covering all the important topics, beautifully organised. There are videos, random question generators, and embedded Geogebra and Autograph activities that run straight from page. An excellent website that you and your students will get a lot out of. Congratulations and many thanks to Dan Clark for creating it!

MEI has kindly shared the following resources to support the use of ICT in A/AS Level maths. These are practical activities that look at how we can use Autograph to enhance the study of e, ln and functions, predominantly at A2 level. These are ideal for use in a computer room or for students to investigate at home. The pdf file contains full instructions and challenges, and the attached Autograph and Excel files can be used to demonstrate and consolidate understanding back in the classroom. Please click on the web-link to find out more about the work of MEI.

An Autograph Player activity where students must figure out how 6 vectors have been created. You can use this activity on the interactive whiteboard, or for your students to investigate on their own. Autograph does not need to be installed to use this activity (so your students can even use it at home), but you will need to install the free Autograph Player add-on (instructions given after clicking the link). For a full list of Autograph Activities, please click on the other web-link.

In Web Whizz Video 16 we looked at the outstanding Number Loving Blog. Well, not content with conquering the world of blogging, Sharon and Laura have put together an accompanying resources website, and what a website it is! You won’t find many boring PowerPoints and worksheets. Oh no, on Number Loving you will come across mysteries, collective memories, treasure hunts, top trumps, and much, much more. Here we look at 5 resources just to give you a flavour of what this amazing website has to offer.

It’s that time of year again. Your exam classes have left, reports are written, parents evenings are over, and maybe (just maybe) you can start to relax a little and look forward to the promise of the long summer holiday. But before all of that, you still have some lessons to teach! Myself and the TES Maths Panel have put together the following Collection of resources to help you in these last few weeks of term. If you are up for trying something a bit different in your maths lessons, then hopefully you will find something to tickle your fancy in amongst these ten lovely resources.

Over the last couple of months I have asked my TES Maths Panel to compile a series of Topic Specials on the major area of maths teaching. They were challenged to find 10 outstanding resources from the thousands freely available on TES to assemble into themed collections. These collections are now live on the website, and they are simply phenomenal. The range and quality of the resources kindly shared by TES users always amazes me, and these collections should help you dive straight in to the very best that TES has to offer. Thank you to the Panel for all their hard work!

An Autograph Player activity designed to help investigate the link between graphical and algebraic solutions to simultaneous equations. You can use this activity on the interactive whiteboard, or for your students to investigate on their own. Autograph does not need to be installed to use this activity (so your students can even use it at home), but you will need to install the free Autograph Player add-on (instructions given after clicking the link). For a full list of Autograph Activities, please click on the other web-link.

Earliest recommended Year group: Year 10. Pupils are presented with a number of simultaneous equations to solve. How quickly will they spot that they only need to select one pair? How many will select the easiest pair rather than just the first two in the list?....... This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm

The 66th in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. The second of the Autograph Puzzle Trilogy! Here we look at another a lovely pencil and paper puzzle inspired by Don Steward’s amazing Median Maths Blog. Students are given four co-ordinates and asked to consider the shape that would be formed by joining up the midpoints of pairs of these co-ordinates. What type of quadrilateral is it? How do they know? We can then turn to Autograph to construct the puzzle and investigate it even further. Click on the link to see all my Autograph videos

In recent weeks I don’t mind confessing that I have become more than a little obsessed with Don Steward’s outstanding Median Blog. The quality and variety of the resources on offer is simply world class. I absolutely adore the almost random nature of the resources produced. In this video we need look no further than the first page to find top quality resources on a whole host of topics.

The 62nd in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. A common misconception amongst students (and myself, actually!) is that a rectangle has 4 lines of symmetry. In this video we look at how we can use Autograph to illustrate this concept in a simple, effective way and thus dispel the myth once and for all. Along the way we look at hiding objects and parallel lines. Clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series.

As a teacher, I am obsessed by questions. The best questions are those that get the students thinking and ignite their interests. This website, created by Dan Meyer, is all about interesting questions. When you visit the website you are presented with an image and asked to write down the first question that comes to mind. You can then access a whole back catalogue of images and questions on everything from gumball machines to dominoes. These provide outstanding stimuli for lessons, and highlight the practical and many varied uses of mathematics.