The award-winning “Abacus: The Art of Calculating with Beads” by Luis Fernandes offers a tutorial on using the abacus. It includes pages on the history of the abacus, how to do basic math using an abacus, an interactive tutor, articles and stories, and references and links to other sites. The website is http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/.

Of course, there are other sites that offer ideas, history, and how to use an abacus. One is put out by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and is called the Electronic Abacus. It (and much more mathematical information) can be found at http://illuminations.nctm.org under “activites.”