Ontario Online Math

There are a lot of great online resources out there but here I am only focusing on those that have the following qualities:

• are linked directly to grade 7-12 Ontario Math curriculum
• allow teachers to follow their student's progress in real time
• allow teachers to comment or interact with students and the work they do

So presented here are tools and resources that do some or all of these things (in no particular order). If you have other resources that you think could fit these criteria then please contact me at davidpetro314@gmail.com or on Twitter at @DavidPetro314

Desmos https://teacher.desmos.com/
Many of you know that Desmos is a free online graphing calculator but you may not know that it also has a whole bank of premade activities via Desmos Classroom that are basically like interactive math slideshows for your students. When students are doing these activities you can observe what they are doing in real time from the teacher dashboard once you assign them to your students. An added feature is the ability to directly comment to students on each slide of their activities to give them on going feedback. You get access to the activities through the teacher site (https://teacher.desmos.com/) and students through the student site (https://student.desmos.com/).  To learn how to run an activity you can go here and check this out to find out about their commenting feature (to learn about all of the Desmos offerings go to learn.desmos.com). And on top of all that, you can use their software to create your own interactive slideshows.

Desmos is a US company and so any grade designations on their site will correspond to US standards. However, I have taken all of the overall expectations for Gr7-12 math courses and I have matched all of the appropriate Desmos activities to them (as well as my own and some of other teachers). When I was done there was over 45 pages of activities in total. You can get to them at the links below (If you have any others that match Ontario curriculum, please let me know).

• Gr7&8
• Gr9 Destreamed Math
• Gr10 Applied and Academic
• Gr11 MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C
• Gr12 MHF4U, MCV4U, MDM4U, MCT4C, MAP4C

ExploreLearning - Gizmos https://www.explorelearning.com/
In Ontario, hopefully you know that we have free access to Gr 3-12 Gizmos for all teachers (and thus all students). If you are unaware of how you gain access, I would contact your school board math specialist as each board has their own unique login codes. Once you are in, one of my favourite things is that all of the Gizmos are organized by topic and by academic standard (they are also organized by textbook but I didn't see any Ontario textbooks listed). My suggestion is to search by academic standard (you can watch this short video to see how). Once you have found Gizmos you want your students to use, then add them to your class (hopefully you have created a class already and shared the class code with your students).

KnowledgeHook https://www.knowledgehook.com/
KnowledgeHook is a Canadian based company that, according to their website, is an Instructional Guidance System (IGS) that uses engaging assessments to unlock insights and expert guidance for math teachers. What that means is they have a number of premade activities for Gr 3-10 math classes that are arranged by strand for each grade. You can choose any of the activities to assign to classes you create (and can assign students to) and play them live in Gameshow mode or assign them as Missions for students to do at their own pace. Normally, the Gameshow mode is a free option and Mission mode is a paid premium option but until the end of the year they have made all accounts Premium accounts so you can assign activities in Mission mode. To see how to do that check out this quick video.  The other thing with KnowledgeHook is that you can create your own activities as well to customize the experience for your own students.

Now these next couple don't hit the requirements of student teacher interaction but they do hit Ontario Curriculum Directly:

CEMC Open Courseware: Here you will find online math lessons for Ontario grades 7-12. Specifically for the stream of students who would be taking academic in grade 9&10 then university courses in grade 11&12. The grade 7&8 course is combined and matched to Canadian curriculum so it's not perfectly aligned to Ontario curriculum. The grade 9, 10&11 courses are combined into one but if you go to the  curriculum mapping, you will see each of them mapped out specifically. There are specific courses for Advanced Functions and Calculus & Vectors. All of the courses have interactives, videos and problem sets. There at no places here to interact with students but at least it connects with our curriculum.

PrepAnywhere: This is actually a tutoring service for students that literally has hundreds of videos that do video lessons and homework examples from the textbooks that we use here in Ontario. The vast majority of the videos are available free of charge with some of it as paid premium content. At the very least you should know that this exists for students and you may even want to let them now about it to help them at home.