Educational Web Site: The Math Forum. The Online Math Education Community Center.

URL: http://forum.swarthmore.edu

Author or Creator: National Science Foundation, NSF.

Ranking (out of 4 stars):*

Review:
 

This web site was started as a Geometry Forum Project, but it got extended to other areas of mathematics and mathematics
eeducation. It focuses generally on the following:

1- Enhancing communication and collaboration among Internet users mathematics teachers, students, organizations, and als
among Internet math providers.
2- Investigating the needs of math teachers and students on the Internet.
3- Bringing and enabling direct accesses to all what is available for math teachers and researchers' purposes.
4- Support the development of resources that make good use of the Internet and offer rich, interesting mathematics.
5- Replicate existing projects such as dicussion groups and problems of the week.
The website is useable by teachers of mathematics from kindergarten to college level. Math and Math Education
researchers can also benifit from it.
Students also can use a great deal of what the site offers. There is also a place for parents and citizens. In addition, math
and math education organizations can find something related to their work on the site. To my best knowledge, there is no
materials on the site that might make it inappropriate for any student given that she/he chooses the right level material to
work on.

The most educationally valuable feature of this web site is that it really helps almost everybody who is asking for some help
in math or math education. The plenty of web-based lessons,units, projects, and classroom materials is a rich reference for
teachers especially beginners. Ask Dr Math
is a smart way to get personal help on the Internet solving a math problem.
Teacher to teacher is a great chance to exchange experience among teachers.
Problems of the week is another opportunity for teachers and students to improve their problem solving ability.

If I am to criticize the web site, I would just say that it gives students the less attention focusing more on teachers and
educators. Though the web seems easy to be navigated, I think it is a little hard to students to navigate all the areas.

Finally, The appropriate way to enhance and support the use of this website and to add materials to it is to join the math
forum and get engaged in the discussion groups, share in asking or answering problems on Ask Dr Math, and also to put
some of your own math lesson plans in the website.