Yesterday we started a new half term, and a new focus for the next few weeks in maths - data handling. I began by asking the class a simple question: "what did you do during the holidays?" Naturally they all had plenty to say, and each child took delight in telling the others what they had done during the break.
Of course, by the time we finished this, no one could remember what was said at the beginning (a handy result that I had hoped for!), and so we had to think of another way to record this information: writing it down on the Smartboard was suggested.
As you can see, that wasn't very good either as the children wrote on top of each others comments and ended up with a grand mess! At this point I stepped in and asked whether we could group the comments into similar events. We ended up with six categories, and from that we created a tally chart of the same information as above, (but much quicker!). As soon as we had completed the tally, one bright spark piped up that we could make a chart from it, and so we quickly made a chart on the Smartboard to show the tally as a graph.
I ended the lesson by asking the class to think about what did / did not work in that lesson - the verbal response / sentences / tally / chart - as we would be discussing it the next day, and today we did.
I'd created an etherpad ready (public, but password protected so there was no need to log in) with a simple question at the start "Why was it hard to see all the data when everyone wrote a sentence on the board?" I explained how the etherpad worked - how we could all write at the same time and see what each other was doing - and set them off to answer the question.
Of course, I didn't realise that they don't think like adults. They don't see a line of writing appearing and decide to start writing on a new line, oh no - they all tried to write on the same line causing chaos! (see the playback of the pad and view just what I mean at the beginning).
To solve this, I stopped them, and quickly wrote all their names on separate lines so that they could then write on "their line". That seemed to solve the problem, and they got on with the task really well. Once they had answered the question, I asked another one (using the chat box on screen) and they then answered that one too. Everyone was fully engaged in the task, and loved it!
Finally, once we had completed the discussion, I set them loose with 2Simples Online Tools - the 2Graph program, and asked them to create their own graph from the data we collected yesterday. They added titles (but some forgot to label the axis) and then saved online, before exporting to their space on the school server. From there, I was able to quickly grab their images and put them into a second article on the website to show todays work.
Two days - and two great lessons using tech. Feeling so great about it, that next week, I'm hoping to use Twitter to gather some data that we will use within our lesson.
Not bad for an idiot, and one who is stuck in his ways, not wanting to move with the times, eh?
