Exploration and Reinforcement

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
(Middle School Mathematics)

People – at all different stages of life – learn according to their individual learning styles. Although the concept of learning styles applies to everyone, I will focus especially on students in our Math classrooms. Some students learn best with direct instruction and a low student to teacher ratio to facilitate plenty of one-on-one attention. Other students learn best when left to their own devices and understanding of the concept, but still need to be checked up on quite frequently. One final type of student (in this, my scenario) prefers being left alone once instruction is over to just work on guided practice on their own – with minimal supervision. The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives caters to all these different sorts of students in our classrooms, while offering teachers a great on-going assessment tool – technology. Teachers can assess to what level (novice, apprentice, expert, I-understand-this-concept-I-am-so-devastatingly-bored,-Teacher!!) their students are getting concepts.

While it might seem that this website is purely for the reinforcement and additional practice and training of materials, I am fond of the idea that it affords the extra opportunity to students who may want to extend their understanding of current topics or explore related topics that are built upon the basics already introduced in class. But again, it is sensitive in that it just might discreetly allow a student who finds himself (or herself) struggling in a certain area to click around and do some practice problems, without requiring too much classroom time drilling all levels of the classroom on the concept.The Virtual Library link leads you to a page that is laid out in a matrix or chart, and is an excellent resource for ideas on how to slide the scale up and down to the difficulty levels of the Math concepts of Number & Operations, Algebra, Geometry, Measurement, Data Analysis & Probability. It can be considered that the levels of understanding are: “Beginner” (Grades Pre-K to 2); “Intermediate” (Grades 3 to 5); “Advanced” (Grades 6 to 8); “Expert” (Grades 9-12). I completely enjoy the interactive nature of the different activities, and the way concepts are conveyed makes me think someone seriously considered the Myers Briggs, personality and IQ tests, and that people learn differently, but almost all love games.

Focusing on Grades 6-8, the site touches on number theory in Algebra, prime numbers in Number & Operations, the Pythagorean Theorem in Geometry, spatial relationships in Measurements & Manipulatives, and summarizing data in Data Analysis & Probability. Not a stranger to Yahoo! Games during my lunch hour at work, I am living proof that teachers can also have fun – playing the Tangram games in 6-8 Measurements – I mean, testing it out for any age-inappropriate quirks. The support team of the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives definitely understands that people learn differently, and knows that people can rarely pass up interactive tools. Teachers, let’s keep our Java applet updates, well, up to date! Download your Free Trial Desktop Version now!

I like to think that, along with a well-trained teacher, the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives, helps students satisfy the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 6^th categories of the National Education Technology Standards for Students (NETS):

2. Social, ethical and human issues: Students develop positive attitudes toward technology uses that support lifelong learning, collaboration, personal pursuits, and productivity.

3. Technology productivity tools: Students use technology tools to enhance learning, increase productivity, and promote creativity.

6. Technology problem-solving and decision-making tools: Students employ technology in the development of strategies for solving problems in the real world.

I also think NETS Performance Indicators for Technology Literate Students is met by this website.

NETS Indicator #4: Use content specific tools, software, and simulation (e.g., environmental probes, graphing calculators, exploratory environments, Web tools) to support learning and research.

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