Digital Math Manipulatives and Models

The use of manipulatives and models for math aid students in learning math conceptually. While physical manipulatives are great there are also a lot of math manipulative apps available.These math manipulative apps align well with the common core math standards and allow students to develop conceptual understanding of many math concepts.

Here are a few teachers and students have been using:

Virtual Manipulatives is a app from ABCya.com and provides both fraction bars and fraction circles. In addition to fractions, there are models for decimals and percents. The app includes an pen tool for annotating on the screen. In this lesson, the teacher and students were using the app to decompose both simple fractions and mixed numbers.

Virtual Manipulatives: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/virtual-manipulatives!/id471341079?mt=8

Number Pieces is from The Math Learning Center. There are two apps in this series:
Number Pieces and Number Pieces Basic. The apps both contain sets of Base Ten Blocks (ones, tens, and hundreds), and tools for annotating. The apps can be used for modeling a variety of problems. This teacher is using the app to model decimal division.

Number Pieces: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/number-pieces-by-math-learning/id605433778?mt=8
Number Pieces Basic:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/number-pieces-basic-by-math/id611452042?mt=8

Geoboard is also from The Math Learning Center and is one of my personal favorites. Students always love using Geoboards but mostly because of the the rubber bands. Now we have digital rubber bands! The app has been recently updated and a lot of new features added. In addition to the standard 25-peg board, you can change to a 150-peg board and a circular board on the iPad. There are also annotation tools and a text tool for writing equations and expressions.

The app can be used for learning about area, perimeter, fractions, the new circular Geoboard could help with learning about time, and much more.

     

The app is available for both iPad and iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geoboard-by-math-learning/id519896952?mt=8

The Math Learning Center has other great apps for learning math. Check them out too. Many of their apps are available for IOS, Windows phones and tablets, or via the web.