Australian Primary School Maths Activities, FREE Maths Games, Lessons, Videos, Worksheets, Learn Maths Online.

Australian Primary School Maths Activities, FREE Maths Games, Lessons, Videos, Worksheets, Learn Maths Online.

Slowly does it!

Stage 3 accessed the wireless network today - yipee! A huge thank you to Bernard, our brilliant technical guru, for patiently re-setting each netbook so we could access the wireless network. The first stop was the Smartkiddies Mathematics site - http://www.smartkiddies.com.au/. This is a great site where teachers can select a variety of tasks from all strands of the mathematics syllabus and tailor those activities to meet the needs of each student individually. The second stop was to check out the SBS Gold site (http://www.sbs.com.au/gold/) where the students researched and, then selected, a bushranger from the time of the gold rushes in Australia. Working with a partner, one student has taken on the part of the bushranger while their partner has the task of representing them in our 'Stage 3 Court of Law'. Were these men villains or, were they heroes? All will be decided next week when court is in session and Stage 3 pass judgement! Cases will be documented using Google Documents. All in all, a big day in Stage 3. Cyberspace watch out..... we're on our way!

Getting there

Well, Stage 3 are slowly but surely navigating their way through our class wiki and set of class blogs (check out kidblog.org for a great tool that allows you to set up blogs for your class). 11 out of 30 class members have signed in and left comments - the downside to that has been that they started using the wiki like a social network site such as facebook but a quickly posted message from Yours Truly has momentarily stopped that. A couple of them liked the voki I posted and decided to sign up and create their own - great initiative, however, they posted their respective vokis within the opening cover page of the wiki! To get around that I've added a 'Fun Stuff' page so they can post that type of application - I'm a bit of a control freak about layouts (my issue not the theirs). The big test will be to see how many use their blogs to respond to the Bloom's Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligences tasks set for homework between now and the end of the term. It's onwards and upwards - even if we can't do this type of thing in class.

Rising above frustration

Words cannot adequately describe how enthusiastic I was to be planning for the invasion of all things Web 2.0 into the daily life of Stage 3 this year. We have 16 fabulous netbooks to trial but NO INTERNET ACCESS - yes, I know I'm yelling..... I'm frustrated. With one PC connected to the good old cabled network I've decided to forge ahead even if it's a little tokenistic. Better tokenism than nothing at all. The unit of work planned to integrate Web 2.0 is moving forward - we've visited the Bathurst gold fields, panned for gold (I returned with my retirement fund being excatly the same balance as when I left) and have researched significant people of the time. Tomorrow, using my trusty cabled PC and wireless tablet, I'll endeavour to introduce our Stage 3 Integrated Learning wiki to the class. They've all been invited to join the wiki and their homework will be to accept their invitation. After that, I'll show them how to set up a blog and we'll link their blogs to the wiki. Who says you need more than one PC????? Not me - it's onwards and upwards! Web 2.0..... Stage 3 are on their way!