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From the Kent education blog, I found out about these Flash- based engaging maths ITPs, developed by Coventry LA. They include activities in money, bingo, shape and space and many more. I found that they work best when saved to your pc, then opened.

Dear Steve,

Today, we’ve launched a new collection of free online whiteboard resources.  They are from our Absorb courseware, and offer a wide range of simulations, animations and models across secondary school science, D&T and mathematics.

You’ll find these resources at www.yenka.com/freecontent/

Teachers in your LEA can use them in schools and at home, and there’s no need to register - just search or browse for the content you want.

This BBC article tells of the improvements in maths made by primary school children in Dundee by regularly playing Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training on a Nintendo DS lite. (You may have heard this first at our ICT conference in March!).

The seventh eLearning Awards competition is now open and schools are invited to submit entries for the eLearning Awards 2007 that exemplify the best use of ICT in education. Entries are welcome from schools or teachers in EU Member States, EEA Countries, EU Applicant Countries as well as Switzerland and Israel. Entries can be made from now until 31 October 2007 online at http://elearningawards.eun.org.

The aim of the competition is to promote the use of ICT in education and to encourage schools to collaborate. A gallery will showcase on the eLearning Portal contributions from all around Europe. This year’s sponsors include Young Digital Planet (Platinum sponsor), Intel, Promethean and InterWrite (Gold sponsors), Telefónica O2 and MICHAEL (Bronze sponsors).

Prizes (cash and equipment) will be awarded in categories highlighting best practice in the use of ICT in the areas of:

o       School of the future
o       The e-safe school
o       Promoting digital literacy
o       Creativity (arts)
o       Foreign languages
o       Sustainability (environment)
o       Maths, science and technology
o       Social networking for collaborative learning.

A detailed list is available on the eLearning Awards portal.

Entries will be judged by a panel of experts and the winners presented with their prizes at a prestigious event on 6th December at the annual EMINENT Conference in Brussels, to be opened by Jan Figel’, European Commissioner for Education, Training and Culture.

At Greenfields School this morning, I was introduced to Rainforest maths - a colourful and engaging site from Australia which has activities that cover many aspects of maths at many different levels. Well worth a look.

Dale’s Maths in Motion blog has been spotted by the official website. Check out his blog to find out what the students are up to.

Steph Beard (HOS consultant Telford & Wrekin) has taken a selection of appropriate challenges from the DfES booklet ‘Mathematical Challenges for More Able Pupils‘ and converted them into word.  All of the activities are set up with click and draggable objects, this will hopefully help the pupils to easily manipulate the resource and assist them in trying different combinations of solutions.

You can download these word files by visiting, http://hos.taw.org.uk then clicking on Primary, Numeracy and Challenges from the menu on the left hand side.