Instead of spending time in research libraries, teachers and students can now retrieve information on practically any topic from the web. Some of my favorite websites for getting a quick refresher are www.mathforum.org, en.wikipedia.org, and mathworld.wolfram.com. Unlike a search in google or bing, I can count on pages at those sites to have been written by someone who understands the topic and can trust that links from those pages will not take students to places I would have a hard time explaining to parents.

Mathforum was started at Swarthmore in 1992 and moved to Drexel University in 2001. It has grown from a few energetic teachers and technology buffs to a funded organization supported by Drexel University, the Mathematics Association of America, the National Science Foundation, and a host of foundations and corporations. The Forum has a wealth of resources for teachers, students, and math enthusiasts. It has been named one of the 10 best websites for mathematics by a variety of reviewers. Materials from the Problem of the Week and the Ask Dr. Math features are now published as books, available on the website or at brick-and-mortar bookstores. I attended a session at the 2006 NCTM conference in Atlanta given by a professor from Texas who published on the Mathforum about the science of drag racing.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia with an amazing collection of articles. The quality of the pages can be a bit more hit or miss than at the other two sites, in part because it relies on volunteers to write and edit the articles. Like any general purpose encyclopedia, there are articles that may not be suitable for children, though not in mathematics. The sheer breadth of coverage is astonishing.

Mathworld by Wolfram.com sets the bar for coverage of topics about mathematics. The articles are mostly written by mathematicians and are often shorter than I would like. I find the use of symbols and precision of description are very helpful when I am trying to recall the details of a topic.

Good websites are a nice convenience, but when I want to learn about a topic new to me, I’m still most likely to visit the Math Library in Padelford Hall on the UW campus.

Traci Ostrick's 2009 NCTM Presentation, "Adventures in Elementary Math Coaching"

Jill Britton's collection of links to activities to accompany her book "Investigating Patterns: Symmetry and Tessellations"

Jill Britton's collection of links to activities to accompany her book "Investigating Patterns: Polyhedra Pastimes"