YTeach is a new online resource aimed at children from 3rd class upwards. When I say upwards, I mean upwards to the Leaving Certificate. Prim-Ed are Ireland’s distributors of this massive database of activities, which cover the Maths and Science curriculum. This review focuses on the Primary content.
Prim-Ed have tailored the content to fit the Irish primary curriculum, which is essential. There are nearly 2,000 maths and 1,200 science resources, which is a heck of a lot. The only problem is that it’s going to take a long long time to sort through them all.
To make things easier, Prim-Ed have divided these thousands of resources into individual strands of the curriculum, which is somewhat helpful. However, with 241 resources alone on operations in the Number strand of Maths, there’s still a lot to filter through before finding what you’re looking for.
To test things out, I tried to find a resource to help me support long division for a 5th class lesson. My first port of call was to search for “long division” in the clearly labeled search section. 164 Mathematics resources were found. Checking the first 5 options, none of them were relevant to long division, which was a shame. Checking out the Irish curriculum resources section and going through the curriculum proved unsuccessful too. I knew there had to be a lesson or presentation about long division in there somewhere, but, to be honest, I just couldn’t have been bothered trawling through the clutter.
In general, the content of yTeach is divided up into activities, presentations, animations, slideshows, simulations, games and illustrations. Most of them teach a concept well and look professional.
If I were to improve this resource, I would sub-categorise the resources even further or improve the quality of the search engine. If I want to teach long division, I would prefer to not have to trawl through irrelevant search results.
I think yTeach has potential, but still needs a good bit of work in its organisation to make it more accessible to the average teacher.
