http://teacherline.pbs.org/teacherline/

PBS TeacherLine provides teachers with "online professional development in mathematics and technology integration." The site offers online courses, facilitated discussions, self-paced professional development, as well as online resources and tools that can be used to plan your professional development. PBS member stations offer the courses for a fee but resources on Mathematics, Science, Technology and Curriculum Integration, and Reading / Language Arts education are available free online. The Interactives section provides some lesson ideas, explaining the purpose of the activity, ways to adapt the lesson and why the activity is useful. In addition, the discussion boards and planning tools can only be accessed by registered users, but registration is free. [VF]

http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS/dysys.html

The Dynamical Systems and Technology Project brought to you by the Department of Mathematics at Boston University and the National Science Foundation offers resources for teaching chaos and fractals. The website includes a number of Java applets and several interactive papers "designed to help teachers and students understand the mathematics behind such topics as iterated function systems (the chaos game) and the Mandelbrot and Julia sets." For example, from here, you can play the chaos game, explore iterated function systems, or make fractal movies. Some parts of the website are still under construction and more resources are promised in the future. The materials are intended for secondary school and college teachers of mathematics. [VF]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/asguru/maths/intro.shtml

BBC offers this easy-to-navigate website that reviews mathematics topics required for students in the British education system. AS Guru Maths was produced in consultation with teachers and "focuses specifically on those parts of the core curriculum that have proven the most difficult for students to deal with." The section on Methods reviews functions and graphs, differentiation and integration and the Pure section covers the study of functions, including trigonometric, logarithmic and exponential functions. A third section covers Statistics. The topics can also be selected from a drop-down menu. [VF]

http://www2.imsa.edu/

The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy® (IMSA) is a magnet school for grades 10 - 12 "created by the State to develop talent and stimulate excellence in teaching and learning in mathematics, science and technology." About 650 students are enrolled in this 3-year residential program, which takes "a unique approach to learning that is problem-centered, inquiry-based and integrative." The bulk of the website is dedicated to describing the program for current and prospective students and others interested in their approach. However, a section for educators provides links to two of their educational centers. The first, the Center for Problem Based Learning, offers a tutorial on a curriculum development and instructional approach that "simultaneously develops problem solving strategies, disciplinary knowledge bases, and skills." The second link takes you to the 21st Century Information Fluency Project, which provides news, information, tools, and instructional strategies for "information literacy/fluency in K-16." They define information literacy as "the ability to locate, evaluate and use information" and offer professional development workshops and dynamic lesson plans that bring together math and science teachers and their librarian peers to support information literacy instruction. [VF]

http://www.krellinst.org/

The Krell Institute, whose name comes from a 1956 science fiction movie "The Forbidden Planet," aims to "provide superior technical resources, knowledge and experience in managing technology-based education and information programs." The Institute’s primary activities include offering a fellowship for graduate studies in computational science, educational outreach programs, educational conferences, and a K-12 professional development and curriculum called Adventures in Supercomputing. The Learning Center section provides a wealth of website links to research centers, articles, journals, and web-based courses all relating to computational science. [VF]

http://telecollaborate.net/

The tagline for NickNacks Tellecolaborate is: "Fostering unity and understanding through collaboration." Building on the potential for the Internet to bring together educators and students around the world, NickNacks helps teachers participate in a telecollaboration or start their own. Telecollaborations can be developed to exchange information, collect research data, analyze data or conduct real-time Internet conferencing using email lists, discussion boards, as well as synchronous, or real-time chat formats. NickNacks offers instructions for deciding on the best program for your needs and available resources; links to online resources such as mailing lists, as well as useful tools, lesson resources, and publications. They also invite teachers to join one of their thematic telecollaborations. The thematic projects are accompanied by supporting instructional resources and extension activities developed by NickNacks. For those ready to develop their own instructional project, guidelines and online support are offered. [VF]