Questionaut

Checking my various feeds today I came across several mentions of the BBC game 'Questionaut'.It is a beautiful and fascinating online game. The user must figure out a puzzle (no hints or information is given) in order to activate the game. They then answer a range of questions (Science, Maths and English) in order to move to the next island. The questions are a little tricky so probably suit Year 6-8. Check it out at http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/games/questionaut/.

Today was the first of our off-site cluster meetings with our facilitator (etime). We looked at how to use digital cameras properly and how to edit using Picasa. My group had the topic "Discovery". We went around the middle of town taking a variety of photos using the different functions on our cameras. I look forward to using these skills with my class!

World Maths Day

On the 5th of March my class participated in the international online mathematics competition. We had set ourselves a goal to achieve 10 000 correct answers. We booked the pod of laptops and scrounged around the school to get extras so that there was one laptop/computer for every two children. At about 12 the website overloaded and we were unable to log on anymore! Kids were gutted as we had been practising for a week or so beforehand. On the Friday the website updated our scores and the kids were sooo excited because we had guessed we had about 12-14 000 correct answers. When we checked we only had 8600! Kids ended up writing (for some of them) their first email to the organisers of the site. We got a reply later that afternoon apologising and allowing us (and I guess everybody else) access to the site for another week. It was a great lesson in what you can do when you come across something that isn't 'fair'. WorldMathDay people were fantastic. It was such a valuable thing to be part of. Will be lining up to do it again next year (and they are working on ensuring site doesn't crash next year!!!).