Jul
4
If some of the students in your class are having trouble with their Math, maybe you can relate to this video. Only Abbot and Costello could do Math this way.
May
23
Venn Diagrams
Filed Under Math, Social Studies | Leave a Comment
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. First we had our Red River Regional Heritage Fair last Thursday (a massive undertaking on its own) and early this past Tuesday morning my son was born. Not too surprisingly, I haven’t been doing much blogging.
One thing I stumbled on before all the fun began was a little site to generate Venn Diagrams. If you’re putting together a Math or Social Studies assignment (or working on one) everyone once in a while you need a Venn Diagram and drawing one by hand is a messy business. This site helps you create them, though I have to confess it seems limited in what it can do. It’s a great little tool if you have three overlapping items, but if you have two or four, or if you want to adjust just how much they overlap, well, then you’re stuck.
Still, for what it is - a handy little diagram that you can embed in a blog or webpage if you want - it’s not bad.
May
15
Blobs: Game Day Thursday
Filed Under Games, Math, Science | Leave a Comment
I discovered the oddest game recently. Blobs is a strangely compelling jumping game where you have a board full of green blobs that you make jump each other. The jumped blob disappears, and you keep going. The object is to end up with only one blob at the end of the level. There are 100 levels to play, with 8 blobs on level 1, and 30 on level 100.
This game is an excellent activity for developing logical reasoning skills in younger kids in much the same way chess would. However, while chess appeals mainly to a certain type of intense thinker, this is likely to have a wider appeal because of its cute green blobs and its sound effects.
The transfer of these skills to school is pretty obvious. The same type of rational, patient thinking that would make a kid successful in a game like Blobs would also be useful in Math or Science. That kind of ability to think clearly ultimately spills over into all subjects and is something that you really want to encourage.
Of course, is your school pretty to encourage logical thinking by playing video games?
May
8
Game Day: Arcademic Skill Builders
Filed Under English, Games, Math, Social Studies | Leave a Comment
Arcademic Skill Builders is an awkwardly named site that has a host of simple little Flash games that try to teach academic concepts. The games are bright, colorful, and simple suggesting they’re aimed mainly at elementary kids. A casual look at the site suggests that Social Studies, Math and Language Arts are the two subjects that receive most of the attention.
I gave a quck run through Capital Penguin where I had to make my penguin jump to the ice floe that represented the state matching the capital on the bottom of the screen. It was reasonably entertaining (though the music was annoying), but I have only one complain.
The ice floes did not have the name of the state in question, but only the two letter abbreviation. Being a Canadian and not completely at ease with state abbreviations, this led to a couple of mistakes on my part. Since the site seems to be aimed at younger kids, I’m left to wonder whether it’s most important to know the full name of a state or its abbreviation. If I had to pick one, I’d rather my students could spell out the state in full. Maybe that’s just me.
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