In Yr 7 we’ve been learning more about factors, multiples, prime numbers etc. It was the perfect opportunity to introduce kids to a great app called DigitWhiz. Yes, it covers the basic operations of multiplication and division, but unlike a lot of other Maths apps, it includes a lot more that is useful to secondary school students , all in one free app. You can access most of the activities without the need to sign up. Prime Factor Whiz helps students to learn about and practise factor trees and prime factorisation. They can choose the Drag and drop option, where they select suitable factors from a range of choices, or, if they are more confident, go to the Type option, where no clues are given. The app also has excellent activities for introducing and working with negative numbers; activities to introduce like terms; and more on solving equations. There are activities at various levels, which is great for differentiation.
Just in time for this topic, the Mathletics activities ‘Prime or Composite’ and ‘Highest Common Multiple’ became iPad ready, which was a bonus.
Next week, as we wrap up the topic, students will be using Strip Design to produce a short comic strip on either How to find the Highest Common Factor, How to find the Lowest Common Multiple, or The difference between Prime and Composite Numbers. They’ll upload this to Edmodo to share with others, and to their Blog. This was very successful with last year’s group (sample below).
A sudden problem uploading Paperport Notes to DropBox lead, thanks to Clare Rafferty, to the discovery of another great tool, Showbie This app makes it really simple for students to upload work from their iPads to a personal folder. The teacher creates a class and gives the students the code, their folder appears in the teacher’s class and all work can be accessed in a central place. Most apps are supported and the Showbie developers encourage you to contact them if there’s an app you need that isn’t yet available. Students Share and/or Open in, and the Showbie icon appears, it’s all pretty straightforward. Once work is submitted, teachers can write notes, or record voice messages to the students to give feedback on the work. There are a heap of support videos available if you need them.
Our Playground Design measurement assignment is due this Friday. Most students are completing the task on the iPad, using PaperPort Notes; inserting photos of the suggested site, grid paper for draft drawings. Many have chosen to do their final design on graph paper, but some will photograph this to include in their PaperPort note. They will then be able to submit the entire document to Showbie. I’m looking forward to what they come up with.