Thursday 29 October 2015

Creation of Digital Materials Three year phased Project

Creation of Digital Material for interactive learning, a turnaround strategy that builds a solid foundation, an interactive and enjoyable teaching and learning of Mathematics. The project aims to flip, liven up classrooms, and make Mathematics practical, in order to improve learners’ performance and mathematics skills. Digital materials created  are used to deliver Mathematics lessons and  to impact on a larger scale, the materials are accessible both within the class and beyond and  learners interact with the materials. The digital materials are audible Office Mix, PowerPoint or OneNote lessons presentations that run when played. They have questions, quizzes, questionnaires and learners have to summarize/ make notes to show that they went through the materials. Toronto Primary school motto “Together we can” will be evident when I empower mathematics teachers in other grades and other schools in the Province to develop and use the digital materials for teaching and learning of Mathematics.









Friday 14 August 2015

Creation of Digital Materials for Interactive Mathematics Learning


In this project as a Maths educator, I am developing digital materials using new technologies such as Office Mix, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Sway to liven up my classroom, to engage learners with  content , to develop learners' 21st Century skills and to enhance the quality of Mathematics teaching and learning.  The problem I have seen is that learners' performance in Mathematics is becoming  weaker every year than the previous year. Although the curriculum is changing every now and then, the fact remains that the curriculum is pre-digital and offered by pre-digital educators to digital learners. Although I was born before technology, I have taken initiatives to develop myself digitally hence I am able to prepare the digital materials. The digital materials I prepared will be available on my blog, OneNote and  Facebook. Both teachers and learners could access them on my blog and on my  Facebook page.

I will also inspire learners to develop their own materials to reinforce their Mathematics learning . They will create performances such as songs, plays, videos and many more and digital materials such as PowerPoints, Word  Documents, OneNote pages, Sways, e-books, Posters, etc. on computers and iPads. The performances and digital materials will be shared with other learners at school during assembly and  in the  classrooms  and will be made available on You Tube, my blog and the class OneNote.

Through this project I hope to see an improvement in learners' performance in  Mathematics.  https://youtu.be/iCiYPNNq4y0



Sunday 15 February 2015

Get Creative with Microsoft Free Tools and Dock to Desktop


 Big ideas start from innovative and small ideas. Innovative minds already know that using ICT to enhance learning is a critical path to take but as to where to start, others are still in the dark. In this blog you will learn from the very first webinar I conducted on the 12th of February 2015 about the “Creative use of Microsoft Free Tools" to kick start teaching with technology .



The free digital tools are accessible on Microsoft Educator Network under Resources tab.  Tutorials and guidelines in a form of videos and written explanations are available and come with each tool. The tutorials do not prescribe how teachers should use the tools but only give guidelines. Innovative teachers decide on how to creatively use them to bring life to their lessons. References could be made from other teachers learning activities also available under the same resources tab on the Microsoft Educator Network website.

Dock to Desktop is an exciting functionality used to annotate documents like Word, PowerPoint, Web Browser, social media and other One Note pages on OneNote. This functionality allows users to make notes on a docked OneNote and also link the reference page. Say you are making notes on a PowerPoint, the summary made will have a thumbnail that will take you back to the PowerPoint whenever you want to.

 How do we create LINKED docked OneNote page that keeps track of the document you are summarizing? Click on the Linked Notes button under Review tab on Word or PowerPoint documents, a OneNote Page + the associated document will appear. While working on your OneNote 2013 version you could press Ctrl+Alt+D and same will apply. Dock to desktop helps students to avoid copy and paste as the teacher will be able to see the source of students’ work, plagiarism is also avoided as the page is referenced. Teachers can prepare documents for students to make reference to while working on their OneNote tasks. Find more information on Dock to Desktop, Microsoft Educator Network and Schoolnet on the links provided below.

Links

Dock to Desktop http://bit.ly/1zNNgzq
Microsoft Educator Network www.schoolnet.org.za
Schoolnet Blog http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2015/02/schoolnet-webinar-recording-from-thurs.html
Webinar Recording http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p51jjj9kt29/ or 
https://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/_a1018039008/p51jjj9kt29/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal



In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge Marjolein Hoekstra, AbuUbaydullah Abdulkabeer Ishola, Hari Krishna Arya, Razan Roberts and others for their continued support, motivation and contribution on this MIEExpert 15 journey we are taking. Mentors like you are hard to find. Special thanks to Marjolein for her patience and selfless sharing of ideas.

Friday 6 February 2015

Finger Approach for Multiplication of 9

Am not aware of where this method originates but the fact remains it worked for me when I was still at Primary School and today it is working for my learners. What happens in short is that fingers are used to find multiples of 9. Watch and learn




Monday 2 February 2015

Contextualised Games to learn Mathematics

In this project, learners created their own contextualized games after  multiplication lessons . As a starting point, all learners' games were accepted no matter how simple the Maths in it was. This encouraged learners to master content they wanted to create games on and that supported learning in a great way.

Outcomes of the project included among others improved focus, self esteem, improved attitude towards learning, interest in other concepts, participation in lessons and improved performance not only in Mathematics but in other subjects as well. The project also benefited me , as learners played the games there was  communication, interaction and on the spot intervention . I learned about their weaknesses and strengths which  under normal  circumstances is not easy more especially with reserved learners . After intervention , learners had to go back to the drawing board, work on the concepts and come up with something even better. Games are really cool for learning more especially at schools like Toronto Primary where number of learners in a classroom ranges between 50 to 65 learners.

After watching the video, feel free to make contributions; your suggestions and comments are of great value. If you are working on similar projects , kindly share your  findings and games as well.





Geogebra for Intrearactive Mathematics Learning

To demonstrate Mathematics to learners is sometimes a hectic process more especially for 2 digit numbers on-wards, fractions, etc.  With Geogebra, Mathematics teachers do not need to carry thousands and thousands of stones/bottle tops and to keep cutting objects to demonstrate the reality of Mathematics. Check out the Geogebra worksheets below. Try moving the black/red slider and see the numbers and how they increase and decrease.

http://tube.geogebra.org/student/m170647

http://tube.geogebra.org/student/m13571