Blogs

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Permalink Reply by Louise on July 4, 2009 at 8:35pm

If you check out some posts here or just Google for Grade 1 blogs you can see how teachers are using their blogs. The difficulty with very young children is their limited reading/writing /computer skills. I teach Kindergarten and started a grade blog a few months ago. My class have learnt how to navigate around the page and a few (the competent readers and writers) leave comments We use the blog as a means of connecting the school and classroom to family and friends and eventually as a means of connecting to a bigger world via collaboration. Our school is 95% ESL and it's a great way for the kids to show and talk about their work. Once you start the ideas seem to follow.
Louise
http://www.eastwood.nsw.edu.au/kinderclips

Permalink Reply by Maria Nuss on July 5, 2009 at 7:57pm

Thanks so much!!

Permalink Reply by MariaD on July 5, 2009 at 4:44am

Use VoiceThread - a way to blog with voice, together: http://voicethread.com/

Here are simple blog games we play in the Math Clubs: "Rhyming Pics" and "Search and Amplify."

SEARCH AND AMPLIFY. Instead of "search and destroy"! This is one step of the larger game, called RHYMING PICS. I first saw in it in LiveJournal photographer community. The original game is played without words, by replying with pictures
to previously posted pictures (http://community.livejournal.com/rhyming_pics/). In math clubs, we modified the game to have a more defined "step" structure and movements between personal and collective actions. We start from a picture or an object, and every person "finds some math in it" (e.g. symmetry, parallel lines, shapes, curves). Then we share math idea lists, explain where math is to those who don't get it, Wordle or vote or just randomly pick one of these math concepts. Then everybody draws or finds objects/pictures expressing that concepts clearly or interestingly, we search for more math in those, and the cycle repeats.

Going back to "search and amplify," once the group finds a mathematically interesting element in a child's drawing, and names it, we use this word in a Google Image search, which brings up a host of pictures illustrating just this notion beautifully - amplifying it for all to see clearly. It works especially well for ideas kids can't name yet (e.g. parallel lines in a drawing of a 3yo), but even well-known ideas are interesting to see in this aggregated form. We searched for "circles" the other day (http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&sa=1&q=circ...) and found much beauty, high design and complexity - check out the optical illusion, for example (http://www.urgle.com/~mike/optical/Illusion.html). Quoth 4yo D: "It does not want you to notice it's moving!" The activity only takes a minute, and you can do it with any kid drawing. Children love to see what funky math adults can find in their pictures.

This is from the Natural Math mail group: http://groups.google.com/group/naturalmath

Permalink Reply by Maria Nuss on July 5, 2009 at 7:59pm

Wow!!! I can't wait to check this out. Thank you!!