YouCubed: Math Site Review 1

Review by Marisol Castillo Schultz

I had the opportunity to research and review Stanford’s YouCubed mathematics site.

Not to sound cynical, but when I started my expectations were as follows: toddler math games, links to math games and math activities for students to do at home or in class and half of these are going to require my credit card information.

Almost 90% of the sites I have visited in my research of online educational sites all have the above-mentioned characteristics. It is not a bad thing to have many toddler math games out there or crafty ideas to engage students in math activities but they are all the same thing.

I must admit, Stanford’s YouCubed website was quite refreshing.

Upon entering the site you need to create a FREE account in order to be able to see most of its content, not too bad considering it is free. There are numerous tabs with different content to help inspire or help teach math to students of any age. There were a few sections that stood out:

1. Tasks– here anyone can do these projects to learn different types of math practices and they are aimed at different grade groups. What is interesting about these activities is that they are simple to do, fun and have not really been seen everywhere else.
2. Resources – this section provides many articles, papers and books that help inform teachers or parents on teaching math and the effects of different techniques.
3. Doing group activities in class and documenting student responses- videos of student’s testimonies is a great way of seeing real honest proof of what certain math ideas or products provide for students. In general it showed how students reacted to in group math activities and their satisfaction with their new learning experience.

If you are looking for a resourceful math website that offers more than just links to pirate math games for young children look no further! It’s free, it’s informative and it has a lesson in Spanish as well.