We wanted to achieve three things from our maths session today

1. Make a short survey using a Google Form.
2. Complete other people’s surveys and get a feel for the process.
3. Review the data added to our own and explore some of the ways it is represented.

After placing the lesson in the context you see in the first paragraph, I began the session by explaining that I was going to use my Twitter network to help demonstrate how we can use Google Forms to collect data.

I spent some time with the class going through the process of creating a Form from the Google Docs home screen and then adding my questions and running through the different types of questions you can use. We talked a lot about how this type of data collection is only good for some occasions and a pencil and paper method can still be the best way. It is a matter of choosing the most appropriate.

The class would be making a simple favourites or preference type survey and so our shared one was similar. You can see it embedded in the post below.

Once complete, I sent out the link to this to my Twitter network (Look at the bottom of the Form edit page for the link – I used bit.ly to shorten it for Twitter, more on that later!) I did this because I wanted the children to see data being added, I wanted to demonstrate the moment of data submission from the Google Form. This also helps the children see how a spreadsheet is linked to the form. (15 minutes)

We switched to the spreadsheet and the children thought it was rather magical as the responses started to drop into the cells as we watched. I reminded them that as soon as someone clicks SUBMIT we were seeing the result.

The children then worked in groups of three with a single laptop (2 groups per table) – one of the children signed into their Google Docs (part of Google Apps for Education) account and created their own “Favourites” Google Form. To keep the children focused I asked them to only give 5 choices for their questions otherwise they tend to get longwinded and only create one or two questions. (15 minutes)

One of the useful things about writing up lesson experiences on my blog is that it is wonderful to go back and look at what I learned and make adjustments to lessons. With some of these things in mind, once the groups had made their Forms, rather than share via email etc (this just adds a complication) we clicked on the Live Form link at the foot of the page.

So everyone had on their laptop screens their form and I asked them to simply change places with those on their table and complete each others’ surveys. They then moved around the classroom adding their responses to other forms from other groups. Although it is nice to share via email, in my experience of working with Google Forms and lots of children it is much easier to move the children rather than share the Form. The children certainly got more responses this way and contributed more, there was less in the way.

After each child had submitted their responses they clicked on the Go Back to the form link which reset the form for the next child – this worked out really well. (15 minutes)

Up to this point the children were able to appreciate how Google Forms is a great way to gather information and how it organises it for us in the spreadsheet.

Back at their own Google Form the children spent some time exploring the results Summary page to look at how their data can be represented. (5 minutes)

As a class we returned to our Edu Favourites survey of educators in my Twitter network. By the end of my second session we had over 125 responses and it was a great pool of data to explore. Real data from real people that we literally witnessed being entered. I was able to ask children lots of questions from how it was represented. It proved to be a great plenary. Here are the results from the survey, there are currently 170 responses – thankyou if you were one of them. (5 minutes)

As a final exploration of this whole process you could explore the link data. I used bit.ly to shorten the long Google Form URL. bit.ly provides traffic data, with a free account, and you can show the class where the people clicking on the form are from. Currently there have been 269 clicks on the Edu Favourites form link and here is where everyone is from.

You could even do some work on how many didn’t fill in the form and compare it to those who did.

Thankyou for taking the time to help with our maths lesson today, I am always so grateful for your contributions – and some of you have even gone away wondering what Marmite is – life will never be the same again. By the way I hate it too!

Context

This was the second lesson in the week – the first was a basic introduction to some of terminology in basic probability of events. We talked about the ways we would describe events such as a deer jumping through the window or a cat wandering into the classroom. We then looked at a load of different statements and positioned them on the scale: IMPOSSIBLE – UNLIKELY- POSSIBLE – PROBABLE – CERTAIN. The Twitter lesson would extend this understanding of the language used by exploring the tweets from my network.

Set-up

One of the things I have written about before is the planned tweets that should take place before a lesson if you want to do this type of lesson. You can elicit responses on the spot, live, but you have much more control over how you use the responses if you allow yourself some time to do so. I tweeted this the day before and encouraged as many responses as I could:

With a good handle on the sort of responses I was getting I could plan to make the tweets into any sort of resource I wanted. Another reason to tweet early is to encourage members of your network in other countries to participate. This was crucial to the probability question I was posing.

As the lesson was beginning I repeated my request which bolstered the responses that were coming in live, indeed it gave some people the chance to adjust their snow estimates from the previous day.

Hashtag

At the end of the tweet you can see that I have asked people to respond using the hashtag #TBlesson. In terms of organisation this allowed me to easily copy and paste from a Twitter search page into a Google Doc. If you leave it to your replies you will have to edit out all of the odds and ends that are not relevant to your lesson which is time consuming.

Resources

• I decided that this time I wanted the tweets to be something the children could hold. I turned the digital into analogue and printed the tweets off. They were laminated and cut into individual cards. We made 3 sets for the different activities in the lesson.
• For the location activity we had 2 floor maps of the UK and Europe. I also had a SMART Notebook file from previous years that had tweets and a world map to work with.
• Finally I cleared some of the tables away and used masking tape to make a great big probability scale on the floor. I printed off some labels using the language from the previous day and placed them accordingly.
• 5 or 6 laptops for the location activity.
• The children’s maths books and pencil crayons.

Introduction

Using the #TBlesson hashtag I displayed a Visible Tweets presentation as the children were coming in from playtime. They were soon enthralled as the responses span and twisted their way onto the IWB display. I listened as the children began pointing out something to a friend or spotting a particular country.

I began by talking about my network on Twitter and how I had used it to find out about the chances of snow across the world. We spent some time watching the random display of tweets from the search and we talked about the language we discussed in the previous day and if we could see any examples of people using it.

I think Visible Tweets is an excellent way to display Twitter replies and I would highly recommend it if you are doing the same. This is another reason to use a hashtag when gathering responses as it is much easier and more controlled if you are displaying a specific search term.

In the image you can see a Tweetdeck column – this is another useful tip. I deleted all of the other Twitter columns and I was left with the #TBlesson hashtag search I had running. A simple and easy way to focus your classroom display on just what you need to show.

Listen to me introducing the session to my class. “Twitter Lesson Audio“

Activities

The children were put into mixed ability pairs and we had 5 pairs on each of the three carousel stations. After a 10 minute introduction I rotated these groups every 15 minutes which would allow some time for a short conclusion too.

Location

I wanted the children to begin to explore the location of the responses and to think about the climate of different parts of the world. The children had two floor maps of the UK and Europe to place a set of the tweet cards on (I filtered the cards appropriately). There was also the IWB which had a world map and a bunch of tweets from previous years.

I put out half a dozen laptops for the children to use to help them locate some of the places mentioned in the tweets. All of the children decided to use Google Earth to help them find the places and they then placed the cards on the floor maps.

The children had the option to use the technology to support them if they wanted and were confident enough to know the correct tool to help them. This is a good example of children independently choosing a technology to support their learning.

Probability Scale

There were many fascinating mathematical discussions in this group about the best place to put the different cards on the large scale. The children were having to interpret the plethora of terminology in the tweets and match them to the commonly used language on the scale.

This was a good challenge and the children worked in pairs to support each other in positioning the different statements. All three groups put the statements neatly above and below each other along the scale, even though many were the same. I extended their thinking by inviting them to place them alongside each other if they were equivalent.

A further step was to get pairs to check a small section for accuracy and to look closely at the ordering. I was able to direct different pairs or individuals to review the position of specific tweets that I knew would challenge them appropriately. (For example someone used 0.05)

Language Examples

In the third activity the children simply gathered examples of the language used, writing these out in their books. This would eventually lead us to a major conclusion we made as a class in the plenary.

This fairly straight forward task meant the children were really engaging with the variety of terms used and their records helped them to see the breadth of it.

They recorded fractions, decimals and percentages as well as slang and local phrases used for likelihood.

Reviewing the lesson and the language used

As a whole group we finished the lesson by discussing the different language that we had encountered during the session and shared some of the ways people were using it. We briefly explored the climate differences between locations and heard some examples of places that had an impossible chance of snow.

We concluded that the majority of people used percentages rather than words to describe the likelihood of an event. This lead us to think about the important mathematical link between a number and a word and how even though words are easier to understand they are less precise than giving a numeric value.

The children enjoyed the lesson and the carousel style of activities. After another quick tweet to my network we were able to enjoy some #snowpics to show it really was 100% certain some people were going to get snow!

Lesson Outcomes

The range of activities and the chance to explore the nuances of probability language gave the children a great opportunity to:

• consolidate what they had learned about basic probability language
• experience the full range and variety of terminology used
• begin to understand the link between a lexical and numeric representation of probability

Since my lesson on Tuesday I have already seen two other examples of teachers looking for responses from their Twitter network for specific lessons. Even 2 years on from when I first did this lesson I still think that the opportunity to use your Twitter network to provide insight, responses, input, challenge and data is overlooked by many. What makes it so manageable for us to contribute is that only 140 characters is needed.

A big thankyou to everyone who helped by making a contribution it is really appreciated. Hopefully this post shows you how your 140 characters fit into the bigger picture.

Why not have a look at what you are teaching in the next few weeks and consider making a request for your network to make a contribution. I hope this lesson has given you some ideas and real methods for how this can work and making the most of it in the classroom.

Last night I checked in with the Shapes in Paris Maths Map to check to see if others had added any other placemarks or activities. Initially I couldn’t find the map – only “Maths in Melbourne” which I hadn’t created. This is when I uncovered the sabotage.

Unfortunately “medg” (from their Google profile – last edited by…) had moved all of the Paris placemarks to Melbourne in Australia. They were able to do this because I set the maps to be (a) Public and (b) Open to editing. As the placemarks are location specific it was a long process to find the exact points the activities referred to.

I have managed to recover the map and even add some new placemark activities about Shape and Space to extend the ideas to “51 Shape Activities”. I suppose I should have seen something like this coming, but never expected someone to go to so much trouble to disrupt the resource. As John Johnston remarked maybe not naive of me just “uncynical“.

View 51 Shape Activities in Paris in a larger map

The Maths Maps have been getting a huge amount of traffic. They are in the public domain and I presume that they can be found in searches of user generated Google maps. The three maps have had over 60,000 hits combined and the Paris map over 25,000. Unlike the “Interesting Ways” series the maps are discoverable and openly public. I think that explains the traffic (which I know is not teachers) and also the higher risk of someone messing them up for a laugh.

I still subscribe to the powerful process of crowd-sourcing to generate resources but will be closing the maps to open collaboration because of the higher traffic and higher risk. If anyone wants to contribute some ideas, and I really encourage you to help, then please just send me your GMail and I will add you as an editor. I think this is the right thing to do rather than always backing up and leaving it open to anyone to mess around with – after all I think that the bulk of the traffic is the public, and not educators.

As in so many other cases those who follow me on Twitter helped me out when I was looking for an image to use for the grid. Admittedly I need to brush up on my image creation/editing skills but I was so grateful to get so many people offering help and ideas. Matt Lovegrove a Year 2 teacher in Berkshire, kindly made me some 10×10 grids which were perfect.

After much exploring I discovered that adding an overlay onto Google Maps is not so easy as it is in Google Earth. Here is a how to create your own Google Earth coordinates overlay (and in fact any image overlay!)

Firstly use Google Earth to find a place that is relatively interesting (there is quite a lot of choice you’ll agree!), you will be asking things like, ” What is the position of…?” etc so there needs to be enough in view. You might like to look around the Shapes in Paris Maths Map as it would fit well with this topic, or perhaps the location of your school might be a good starting point. Then follow these screenshots.

You can see an example of the linked coordinates task in the Shapes in Paris map, the placemark is titled “12 Coordinates Questions”.

I also created an example using the school’s location as a starting point in our lesson today. I was able to ask them about the coordinates of our school and even our classroom. I picked up on buildings and shops in the locality and kicked off the lesson using this resource. We zoomed in from space by the way (always exciting) and I told them I had spent all weekend painting the lines and had cleared out the local hardware store of red paint.

Some of the children worked independently today on the Google Earth task and they were really engaged and enjoying the task, we recorded in our maths books, as this was simple and best for us. I hope you are able to follow the idea through for your own group of students and using the screenshots create your own Google Earth coordinates activity.

View 7 Data Handling Activities in Nottingham in a larger map

As with the other resources they are all available on the Maths Maps page.

Please consider taking a minute to add a placemark with an activity on something you spot in the city. There has been some great additions already – I look forward to seeing this develop and I hope you find it useful.

SHAPE IN PARIS

View 24 Shape Activities in Paris in a larger map

I have had a lot of fun exploring the city from above! One facet of Google Maps is Streetview which gives us a wonderful 1st person view of the city streets. I used this same view to set some questions about what could be seen.

For example, here is a Police car and on the bonnet is the mirrored word Police written in block letters. Some of the letters are great examples of regular and irregular shapes.

From space we have zoomed right down into some lettering which can only be about a metre across! This is the sort of detail that Streetview offers us and our students and I would love to see more Maths Maps questions using Streetview.

In the last few days I have heard from a few teachers in my Twitter network who have used the Maths Maps idea already with their classes and it is thrilling to here it making a difference in other classrooms.

That is the very reason why I share my ideas here.

It has proven to be a useful and regular reminder about the difference between the properties of common 2D and 3D shapes. Sometimes it is a standalone activity, depending on the topic we are working on – or it may tie in well with some work on shape. For example when we were looking at nets I used the 3D models of the pyramids to help visualise the shapes.

Well another fun spin on the use of Google Earth 3D models is using the mashup Monster Milk Truck. It draws on the API from Google Earth/Maps, giving you a little milk truck to drive around the Earth. You will need the Google Earth plugin to view it.

With the class as my delivery buddies we hit San Francisco in search of cuboids. We were not to be disappointed as you can imagine that most buildings are this shape. We parked up and I annotated the view we had of some buildings (cuboids) with the properties and ideas we discussed as a class. I then backed this up with some real examples from the classroom and asked the children to spot some more in our room.

It was a great way to have a little fun and explore 3D shapes – as we raced along, milk bottles jangling, the children called out the different 3D shapes they could see. When we saw some cuboids we circled them in the van to get different perspectives, an engaging 10 minute starter.

Recently I was looking for some more ideas for Monster Milk Truck and started a Twitter hashtag #milktruckideas which doesn’t show up on a Twitter search anymore but does when it is Googled.

Would love to hear what you think about this idea for 3D shape and to hear anymore #milktruckideas.

Elevator Pitch

• Using Google Maps.
• Maths activities in different places around the world.
• One location, one maths topic, one map.
• Activities explained in placemarks in Google Maps.
• Placemarks geotagged to the maths it refers to. “How wide is this swimming pool?”
• Teachers to contribute and share ideas.
• Maps can be used as independent tasks or group activities in class.
• Maps can be embedded on websites, blogs or wikis.
• Tasks to be completed by students and recorded online or offline.

Some background

Four years ago I created Google Earth resources for the classroom and posted them to the GE Community Forum. Two of them were called Maths in Madrid and Maths in Las Vegas. These were based on the fact that there is maths all around us, every day, everywhere we look. Google Earth (and Maps) gives us a great perspective on it all. It also provides easy access for our students to see rich visual content that depicts everyday maths. I have always loved the idea of children seeing the maths they are working on.

The only issue with Google Earth is that it is restrictive in two ways. It is not browser based and it is impossible for me to create a resource for others to collaborate on.

Luckily Google Maps has caught up and using the collaborative features I can now invite other teachers and educators to help build on these resources. It is exciting to return to these old ideas and work on them with you all.

First Attempts

Earlier today I invited some people on Twitter to help me make a start and it was great to see loads of ideas added to the Maths in Madrid map I had generated, based on my original work. There were questions about shape, time, money, rotational symmetry, you name it! (Thanks to all those who helped!)

View Maths in Madrid in a larger map
Please don’t add to this map any more – see the Measures in Madrid map below.

The problem here is that although the ideas were organised under maths topics (see map) with different coloured pins, there was no distinction between age appropriateness. There would be too much to filter out for the teacher or student.

With help and direction from those collaborating, I took a simpler approach and created a Measures in Madrid map that collates maths ideas about the one topic. This time the placemark icons are used to distinguish which age group it is best for. See below.

I think this is much easier to use because the map is about one topic, but shows the grade/age level too. Many different maps can be created to cover lots of different maths topics.

Measures in Madrid – How can you contribute?

1. Explore the map below for the ideas already added, follow the link to open it in a new window.
2. Make sure you are signed in to your Google account.
3. Click on EDIT in the left panel.
4. Zoom close to the city and it’s surroundings. (Don’t forget Streetview)
5. Find some MEASURES ideas you can see.
6. Add a placemark (use the right colour for the age group it is best for – see purple pin)
7. Explain the activity in the description.
8. Change the title to show how many ideas there are.
9. Send out a Tweet or write a blog post to highlight this resource and encourage others to contribute.

View 7 Measures Activities in Madrid in a larger map
There are endless amounts of maps we could make and once this one is up and running I will be highlighting some more. I will be embedding them all on the MATHS MAPS page of this blog too.

Please help by contributing just one placemark – let others know about the maps so we can gather lots of ideas.