Using an IWB to present information is one of the worst ways to use an Interactive Whiteboard. You don’t even need the IWB to present -- a projector will do the trick just as well -- simply pre-prepare your slides and off you go. However, sometimes there isn’t really any other way to teach something and long multiplication and long division are two of those times. The only thing the IWB can add to the experience of teaching these topics is a nicer visual representation.

In this article I’m going to show you the four ways I teach long multiplication to the children in my class. Weirdly enough, almost all seem to revert back to the model we are used to, despite two of the methods being much easier.

We’ll start off with the traditional method of doing long multiplication. We’re going to use the interactive whiteboard to model a step-by-step approach, for the inevitable “I’m stuck -- where are you stuck -- I’m just stuck” dialogue. Using the duplication tool that every software has, we can build up the story of long multiplication simply by copying the previous slide and performing one more step. Let’s see an example: 23 x 47

www.youtube.com/watch?v=beZtuqVLdcs

As you can see, we have changed colours of important pieces of the picture -- for example, the zero to show we are multiplying by 40 (not 4). We can now help a child pinpoint the exact stage where they get stuck and we can work with them from there. One might argue that one could do this without an Interactive Whiteboard but, right now in the early days of the IWB, would you get the same motivation from the child?

Moving on to some of the other methods I love. I’m going to show you the easiest way in my opinion to do long multiplication and it’s called the box method. On an IWB, it’s a way of introducing the idea of grids. The screencast below will show you how to set up an interesting looking grid and then we’ll go through 23 x 47. We’ll follow that up with another example and discuss how this can then be used with children interacting.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF6X9fRwpMM

So, children can choose the variables for the puzzle. This is a nice fun way to do long multiplication and children (especially ones who have had the first method hammered into them) nearly feel hard done by for not seeing this first! Some of them feel too guilty to use this method as if it’s cheating!

Still using the grid, I’m going to show you a third method called Napier’s method. Although this might seem confusing at first, watch the screencast a couple of times and you’ll see that this is a really easy way of solving long multiplication. Using the IWB, again we’re showing how to use grids, but also showing the dotted line, which is a useful tool. This can be used with children in a similar way to the box method and it provides great amazement to everyone who sees it the first time. I remember not trusting it at all the first few times!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3ehYWc38F0

The final way I teach long multiplication is the Russian Method, another ingenious way of solving long multiplication problems. It’s also probably the most difficult of the methods. To be honest, there’s no real benefit to doing this on an interactive whiteboard. Instead I’ll just indulge my own geeky leanings and explain how it works in the video cast below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=maWgsRj3wo0

Funnily enough, unless you happen to love multiplying and dividing by two, this method takes longer than all the rest. I think it’s about time we moved to division!

Long division sends shivers down everyone’s spines because it’s the only part of the primary school maths curriculum where there is really no way of explaining each step in a mathematical way. It’s the only time one has to teach a method to solve the problem without any really good reason behind each step. The IWB doesn’t really offer anything amazing to open up the mysteries behind long division. Like the traditional method of solving long multiplication, we can design any long division puzzle in a step-by-step manner so we can pinpoint the “I’m stuck” moment. A possible fun thing is to make the DMSB (Division, multiplication, subtraction, bring down) order a more graphical experience. For example, one child I had in support loved football so DMSB translated to Does Messi Support Barcelona? So in tribute to that, have a look at the videocast below to see how we spiced up Long Division Messi Style.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrKmYPFSO2g

For children who just don’t get Long Division and need an easier (but longer) way of doing things, there is a second way of doing it -- it’s a variation of the repeated subtraction method that children are introduced to in third and fourth class. Again, the IWB isn’t the greatest tool for showing this, but the added splash of colour might inspire some children to “wanting” to grasp the concept.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar6tL41cpXg

So there you have it -- the most ineffiective way to use Interactive Whiteboards (apart from showing PowerPoints) -- but sometimes I must concede it’s excusable. Perhaps someone a lot more inventive than me will create a really cool interactive way to help children learn the concepts of Long Multiplication and Division without the need for a teacher.

Tweet This Post

A teacher in my school suggested that we could develop an online form that parents could fill in if their child was absent.

This simple, but ingenious idea, has resulted in the following link to appear on the home page of our school web site.

Parents can now simply click on the link and they are presented with a simple web form to let us know their child isn’t attending school and why.

There’s plenty of ways to create this for your school’s web site. We used Google forms for our school but any form building tool will work equally well.

Tweet This Post

For lots more information please visit:

http://www.avermedia-europe.com/uk/averpen.aspx

Tweet This Post

2Simple are the company behind a new web site, Purple Mash, which essentially puts most of the 2Simple Software online in full.  Favourites such as 2Paint, 2Animate and Simple City are all there.  I had a go at playing with the software online and was mightily impressed.  It’s easily as good as the version that comes on CD.

For those of you who haven’t heard of 2Simple, it is a set of award winning programs that are simple yet powerful in the primary school classroom.  Programs include ones that allow children to draw pictures on the screen before captioning them, solving problems and tell stories using technology.  There are dozens of activities and they all have a really simple interface but colourful enough to make children enthusiastic.  Purple Mash simply places all this software online so you no longer have to buy the CDs separately, (which used to cost around €40-50 per CD).

In terms of usability, Purple Mash is brilliant.  It contains all the great programmes from the CDs in one place and it’s really easy to print off and save children’s work.

The only issue I would have is Purple Mash’s price.  They are currently holding a special offer of £500 + VAT for a one year licence, which I think is very high.  If you have a school of 100 pupils (and many Irish schools don’t even have that amount), that’s the equivalent of €7 per child per year for this service.  I think this is quite steep even for such a good service and one could probably buy individual CDs cheaper as once off payments.

Essentially, this is the bottom line for Purple Mash.  It’s a brilliant product.  It’s also an innovative product in that it is completely online.  However, Irish schools receive no funding for software or services and I would be doubtful that they would be able to invest such an amount of money per year into a service like this.  It’s a pity really because the product is excellent.  While I would recommend the Purple Mash service as a service, it would need to reduce its charge by at least 75% before I could safely say it was excellent value for money.

Tweet This Post

Tweet This Post

Educate Together have an excellent digital network including Facebook page and Twitter profile. They also run their own online training. Their web site, EducateTogether.ie, is constantly updated with relevant news for those interested in their work. Educate Together is the representative organisation of the Educate Together schools and associations throughout the Republic of Ireland. They are currently the patron body of 58 primary schools, all funded by the Department of Education and Science.

Tweet This Post

“technology use moved away from the computer room to the classroom by engaging in project based learning and how the school’s involvement in eTwinning was a major catalyst on this journey.”

This is a great interview that should inspire other teachers who wish to integrate ICT into their teaching.  To listen, please go to: http://blog.teachnet.ie/?p=2205

Tweet This Post

Naturally, Google Maps fits nicely into the education sector and when used with an IWB, it can wield rather interesting learning opportunities.

At a very basic level, we can find places, for example, famous landmarks (see below) or your school or a child’s house.

Moving on from there, we can use Google Maps to plan a route from two points, for example, from a child’s house to the school. If you’re feeling really adventurous, you could add photographs along the route for others to follow or do a Google Maps treasure hunt!

One thing I showed the participants on my course were my holiday photos… before I went on my holidays. Let me explain. About a month ago, I went on holidays to Italy but the month beforehand I showed the participants on my IWB course some photographs of where I was going using Google Maps. I went to the web site and typed in the town I was visiting. Once the map showed up, on the left was an option to “explore this area”.  Lo and behold, once I clicked on this. a number of photographs appeared on the map. When I actually went on holiday, I looked out for the buildings in the photos…so it was a bit of a treasure hunt for me too!

I hope this gives you a couple of ideas of how to use Google Maps in a classroom. I have a feeling there’s going to be some interesting educational projects coming down the line with this so keep an eye out on Anseo.net for more information.

Tweet This Post

Circle Time is a listening system, Jenny Mosley will tell you more about it in her Quality Circle Time book. There are some rules to the circle time lesson that must be established and agreed upon with the children before hand. Examples include ” Listen to all” and ” Pass if you need time to think”

Jenny advises that when you take the lesson first, you remain calm and positive! So, try to schedule it in at a time when you are less likely to be hyped! ( Not after lunch or PE for example!) Never say negative things about anyone in the circle. So if someone is breaking a rule, then focus on a child who is keeping the rule and focus on him/her instead.

Quality Circle Time gives you 18 lessons for you to use within your classroom and your Circle Time lesson. There is no need to adapt or add as the lessons are excellent and I use them time and time again. The lesson is made up of a fun starter game, a speaking round, open forum( where the circle gets to speak about their feelings on a chosen theme) and then the circle always ends with a cool down type activity. The whole lesson takes no more than 20 minutes.

They are an integral part of your SPHE planning and your classroom behaviour system too. The Circle time lessons should not be randomly done in isolation as I have witnessed many teachers doing. Some teachers might chose to do just the lessons or just the golden rules, unfortunately this system will only truly work if you take the WHOLE system to your heart and follow it consistently and obsessively for the year with your class! It works, I promise!

If you have any more questions or comments, please email at rozz@anseo.net and I would love to chat!

Next week I will tell you about Golden Time, the 3rd important piece to the JM puzzle! Again, I see some teachers using the Golden Time alone without the rules, sanctions and lessons…These will achieve nothing and the child will never gain the self confidence that is needed to minimise the bad behaviour he/she may be showing.

Till next week, my dearies…

Rozz

Tweet This Post

Step 1: Draw a circle

Step 2: Draw a line through the middle

Step 3: Select / draw a rectangle to cover the part you don't want

Step 4: Delete the rectangle shape to reveal your semi-circle

Shapes on an IWB can be used from Junior Infants up to 6th class for loads of different activities. We have already seen how shapes can be used for sorting, matching and patterns in earlier articles so in the screencast below, we will look at creating shape robots and creating our own 2D polygons using lines. Both these examples show how to group items. Once that’s out of the way, we’ll use our new found 2D polygons, we’ll show some work on symmetry and tesselations.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=74ptjIncIj0

So, 3D shapes and the Interactive Whiteboard -- how does it work? While actual discrete objects are much better for exploring 3D shapes, there are a few web sites out there which allow you to manipulate a number of 3D shapes. My favourite is the BGFL resource, which allows the user to investigate all sorts of 3D shapes that may not have come in your box -- such as Octahedrons, Hemi-spheres and Tetrahedrons. By clicking on each shape, it allows you to rotate it to see the number of sides, vertices and faces. It also allows you to print out a net of the shape so you can create your own physical 3D shape. Whilst there isn’t a lot of physical interaction with the IWB, (you can point and click on the buttons), there is great scope for conversations.

There’s lots of other resources out there which help out with 3D shapes so feel free to add them to the comments below.

Tweet This Post