MathVids.com

Choice www.cro3.org doi: 10.5860/CHOICE.47-1480 CHOICE November 2009 vol. 47 no. 03

Outstanding Title! 47-1480

Internet Resource

MathVids.com. http://www.mathvids.com/ [Visited Aug'09] MathVids.com, created by SchoolVids LLC, aggregates and organizes video lessons, lectures, and tutorials for middle to high school and university students, teachers, or anyone wishing to learn, relearn, or find help and additional teachings on mathematics. The coverage is broad and impressive from arithmetic, fractions, pre-algebra, geometry, and trigonometry to calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, statistics, and discrete mathematics. Each video is scrutinized for appropriateness and accuracy; a single topic may have multiple video presentations to accommodate different learning styles. Before instructors can contribute video content, they must submit a video of themselves teaching a sample lecture. Compensation for video authors is a stated future aim. The site lacks a unified list of author contributors, but a sampling from browsed categories indicates K-12 teachers and college professors as the predominant sources for the videos.

MathVids can be used freely, but brief advertisements appear at the beginning of each video, and additional bottom-banner advertisements appear throughout the video. A one-month, six-month, or yearly paid premium subscription removes the advertisements and adds access to additional supplementary resources, the option to contribute resources to videos, NCTM standards correlated with each video, full-screen video viewing, and downloadable Flash video for offline viewing. A free premium subscription can be "earned" by reviewing videos (three days earned for each video reviewed) or by getting a friend to register for a free account. The quality of the Flash videos is high, with a mixture of basic recordings from class lectures to lessons produced specifically for video playback. Any user can suggest lectures and vote for previously entered suggestions on the "most wanted" list. Lectures added by MIT include free supplementary resources, regardless of type of subscription. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All undergraduate and two-year technical program mathematics students, faculty, practitioners, middle and high school students, and general audiences. --M. Mounts, Dartmouth College Copyright 2009 American Library Association

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