Monday, March 10, 2008

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!!!).

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