Get ready for World Maths Day!

This is a guest post written by Lisa G who is an ITC teacher in Cape Town. Lisa was a Microsoft Innovative finalist in South Africa in 2011 and she keeps an interesting ITC blog http://icteducator.blogspot.com/. I saw this post on her blog this week and asked her if I could use it as a guest post. Last year I wanted to participate in World Maths Day but didn’t get registered in time. So, don’t be like me…prepare well in advance. You’ll need to start now!

World Maths Day is coming up on 7 March 2012.  Have you considered participating?

 

As a school we have taken part and it was a great experience for everyone. Its really simple. All you need to do is get permission from parents, register the children, and then follow the instructions that are very clearly laid out on their website. 

 

It looks from the Pre-registration that one now signs up for World Spelling/Maths/Science Day.  Even better!

 

I registered the children who wanted to take part, and then each day from the time that "practice" begins, they can come in and get used to how the whole event works. I do this so that it is not a surprise when they get to the timed event - they are confident and ready for action!  What I also enjoy about this, is that they can log on at home and continue to practice or compete after school in their own time.

 

The best was listening to their excited shrieks of "I'm playing against Japan!" or "I am playing against India!" or "I am playing against someone in Australia!"  Suddenly the world was bigger than our ICT Lab and we embraced every moment of it!  We got a report back on how each child did and how we achieved as a school. 

 

I am really looking forward to registering our learners for these events again this year. Why don't you? 

 

Wishing all a wonderfully educational 2012!

Bring technology into your Foundation Phase Reading lessons

Here in South Africa the 2012 year has started and the Foundation Phase (Grades R-3) has started implementing the new CAPS curriculum. I thought this would be a great opportunity to draw your attention to 12 websites that have great reading material for your young learners.

1. Storyline Onlinehttp://www.storylineonline.net/

This site is presented by the Screen Actors Guild  Foundation. This is an online video programme with their members reading stories aloud. Each story has some activity suggestions plus a further Activity Guide download with some superb activities and ideas on it. 

 

2. The Tale of Peter Rabbithttp://www.rif.org/assets/interactive/peter_rabbit.html

This is Beatrix Potter’s famous tale beautifully retold using the original drawings and showing the words so that the learners can read along.
 

3. Speakabooshttp://www.speakaboos.com/stories

 

4. Riffs Reading Planethttp://www.rif.org/kids/readingplanet/bookzone/read_aloud_stories.htm

5. Topmarkshttp://topmarks.co.uk/EducationalGames.aspx?cat=37

6. Meegenius e-books for kidshttp://www.meegenius.com/store/books/free/

 

7.  AOL Kidshttp://kids.aol.com/KOL/2/koljrstories/archive/animal-stories

8. PBS Kidshttp://pbskids.org/lions/stories/

 

9. Read to mehttp://www.readtomelv.com/current-books/

 

10. National Geographic Young Explorerhttp://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngyoungexplorer/moreissues.html

11. Starfallhttp://www.starfall.com/

 

12. Short storieshttp://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/childrenindex.html

Classroom applicationPerhaps you don’t have the facilities to make use of these in your classroom – but have you ever considered creating a classroom blog? You could then list these websites on the blog so that parents can make use of them at home.

A fantastic way of integrating technology into your Social Sciences curriculum

Recently I have taken interest in integration the curriculum with Social Sciences so I started doing a websearch. Its amazing what treasures you come across when you do that. After looking through and bookmarking an enormous amount of sites including the Edublogs 2011 winner sites, I came across a social studies Ning site that had won one of the Edublogs awards.

http://sschat.ning.com/


After looking around the Ning I came across a family, the van Soyes,  who will be taking a 400-day around-the-world journey to raise geo-literacy in K-12 students. They will be publishing emails, photos and video from 50 counties and 6 continents.  Wow, they already have an enormous collection of amazing stuff from just preparing for their travels and they have documented it so well. I thought I would record some of it here as it gives great ideas for the classroom.

Embed PDFs into blogs or wikis

Here is a sample from where they plan to be in February. They have created their documents colourfully in a word processor it seems, and have then converted them to PDFs. They then embedded them into their website. 

http://www.trekkingtheplanet.net/docs/W02_Hawaii_Education_Module.pdf


Actually it looks as though they have been very busy with their planning as they have already done all their research and documented it ready for when they actually get there.



Classroom idea
This gives me the idea of getting the learners to study a country using a programme like Microsoft Word to record the details details. They then turn it into a PDF and place it on a blog or wiki.

Make use of podcasts

The van Soyes have a beautiful website for recording their travels with podcasts, webcasts etc. This will be a good website to keep in mind. They would also like to visit schools along the way. I have just checked and they won’t be visiting South Africa unfortunately or we could have arranged for them to visit a school or two!

http://www.trekkingtheplanet.net/


Classroom idea
This gives me the idea that using audio podcasts and getting the learners to make short videos about various aspects of a trip can add great interest to classroom work.

Make use of webcasts

I see on their website that they made a webcast giving background to their intended journey. You can view it here:

http://www.spreecast.com/events/trekkingplanet



Classroom ideaThis gives me the idea of using a programme such as Spreecast for webcasts, (http://www.spreecast.com)  I have just taken a look at it, and it is a social video platform that allows  people to broadcast together.  It says:
Up to 4 people on camera at once.
*Unlimited number of people can view (can also be private).
*Recorded live and immediately available for playback.
*Viewers: Chat, ask questions, join in on camera!
*Creators: You control who goes on camera and when.

Well, this is a project I for one will take a great interest in next year. Why not join me?