I got a
phone call from a teacher in the Maths department on Friday saying that their
class had been studying direction and their latest piece of work involved
making a direction treasure hunt around the school. The class had asked if I
would be available to follow their clues and to find the treasure. As this seemed
like a lot more fun than looking through some attendance statistics, I agreed!
What transpired has to be one of the
most innovative, collaborative, off-the-cuff lessons that I have ever taken
part in!
I was going
to be accompanied on the trail by two members of the class. But I was also keen
to try and keep the other members of the class involved as well. Then I thought
about using Twitter. Twitter is
a micro blogging tool and a key part of my personal learning network.
My idea was
that as I followed the clues I would ‘tweet’
back to the class Interactive Board so they would see how I was getting on.
Then I
thought it might be quite good fun for the class to be joined by some of my
other Twitter followers. As the idea progressed I decided it might be quite
good idea if the rest of the class could be asked some maths questions by some
of my Twitter followers at the same time that I was tweeting back with my progress
on finding the treasure!
Anyway,
everything worked fantastically well. First of all I set up a ‘hash tag’ for
the lesson #mgsmaths.
Then I sent out a couple of tweets explaining what was going to happen:
I also asked other twitter’s to ask the class questions:
The class were in S1 and are
low ability. But they are always keen to learn and try new ideas – I was
really sure that this idea would be engaging for them. I just new that by having
people from around the country asking them questions live would make them feel
really valued.
I went to
the maths room and introduced the class to Twitter and asked any followers to
introduce themselves. I think the teacher was quite shocked at the amount of
responses we got.
Here are some of them:
I also
asked anyone to send in questions for the class to answer. The buzz of excitement
in the class was described by the classroom teacher as, ‘heart-warming and amazing’.
As the children ran to get calculators to answer questions that were being beamed into their classroom from all over the UK.
Here are some of the questions below:
We had
intended to try and get the class to tweet the responses back and we succeeded with
one of the first ones.
But we had
a few technical problems as I was running around the school. So the class just
answered the questions in their jotters – there was no stopping them!
Meanwhile
as all of this was going on I was following detailed clues around the school in
search of the hidden treasure. The carful planned out clues based around
direction led me all over the school, up-stairs and down-stairs.
Eventually I ended up in the PE department and had to find the clue on the South wall. I struggled with this until I looked up and found the ‘virtual’ chocolate bar (we are a health promoting school!) attached to a basketball hoop (who knows how they got it up there). I ‘tweeted’ my success back to the class and headed back up to the maths room.
Back in the
class – they were still working on the puzzles that had been ‘tweeted’ form various other people around the UK and then seemed
very surprised when the bell rang for the end of the day and realised it was
time to go home!
Back in my office I still had Twitter Search up on the screen. During the lesson I was aware of lots of ‘tweets’ coming in but I wasn’t really sure how many there had been. The screen said it all. 47 in just under 20 minutes. No wonder the class were so engaged.
In fact we
became one of the most talked about things on Twitter for a very short period
of time!
This was a
great collaborative lesson which left the children inspired and motivated for
the weekend! As I have said before, for me, making sure that children have a positive
experience of school is the most important thing and if this can be combined
with a productive learning experience then we are on to a winner.
So, from Val (the classroom teacher), all of class A2 and me a huge thank you to everyone who took part in yesterdays lesson! It made my week!
Fantastic!
I've been thinking about "magic moments" like these recently.
They may be unprepared but they can only happen if we are prepared in the deeper sense of having confidence in ourselves and being open to the opportunities of the moment.
Posted by: Robert Jones | February 28, 2009 at 05:45 PM
At least you are "allowed" to use twitter in school.
Great stuff though
Posted by: Adam Sutcliffe | February 28, 2009 at 06:37 PM
Good lesson. I would proceed with caution as there are risks with this close and open nature of twitter such as below.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8063374.stm
I do follow Lance Armstrongs though.
Posted by: Nick | May 22, 2009 at 10:21 PM
Simply great.....thanks
Posted by: Christian Louboutin Pumps | August 05, 2009 at 04:15 PM
Mathematics is a wonderful course! It all the time full of mystery! Full of people tried their best to force it lifted the veil just to
Posted by: Nike Dunks | August 25, 2010 at 01:27 AM