Pi Day Festivities

I know it is late. Pi day was at 1:59 on Sunday but we have had no school since then. Today was our first Pi day at school. Imagine an "Amazing Race" but with math clues. Nine teams of Grade 8 students, 2 teams of Grade 9 students and 5 teams of Grade 7 students raced around the school looking for clues based on our favorite irrational number!! Pi!!

What I took away from this experience was that kids love competing and some kids love to compete using math. So here was our format if you want to use it at your school:

Each Grade had 5 questions to answer. Here are mine..
Question 1
A) Count the lockers outside the gym and before Room 2. 
B) Use that number as the diameter of a circle. 
What is the area of a circle that has B as a diameter?
What room is closest to where you have arrived.  You will find your second clue there.
Question 2
Use the room where you area now and call it a radius. 
Find the are of a circle that has it as a radius. 
Your next clue awaits you there. Question 3
Find the median of the provincial basketball banners by the west gym doors. 
Divide that year by 100 and round to the nearest whole number. 
Use that number as the circumference of a circle.  You will find your next clue at the room that is one whole number larger.
Question 4
Use the Room from Question 3 as a diameter.  Find the surface area of a cylinder whose length is also the answer from Question 3. 
Round the area up to the nearest unit and you will arrive at your next destination.Question 5
Find the Radius of a circle whose circumference is 98432.72 units.  When you find the radius you need to find that number in the gym hallway.  Good luck!!
Final Clue
Find the digital root of this radius.  The treasure awaits you there.

I placed the clues in envelopes at the locations found in the envelopes, (locker numbers, room numbers etc).  After each clue was solved the students would race around to the next clue location and have to find in in close proximity to where the previous clue had sent them.

If I was to do this again I would stagger the groups out and have them start with different questions all returning to the final clue and the prize.  The way I did it this year all students started at question 1 and went to question 2 etc.  It was a bit of a follow the leader instead of solve it on your own.  Oh well.

What Have I learned? I have learned that kids love this activity and as a school we will do it again in a month or so. We will do it outside and set it up like score orienteering.  Perhaps more kids will try out and have fun.  If not the ones who do sign up will have as much fun as the winners from today's Pi event. I guess I forgot to tell you.  All kids received a prize (pizza tickets) due to their large smiles and enthusiasm. 

I love my job:)

2010/365 the second month

I have successfully created a second month of 365 photos. For some reason I missed one day... I took the picture but I cannot find it anywhere. Do not know if this disqualifies me but I am loving this project.

Here is February


Created with flickr slideshow.

Darren Kuropatwa Wolves, Russians and Other Stories

Here is the wonderful keynote given by Darren yesterday at BYTE2010.



Here is his slidedeck

Teaching Interdependence v2

View more presentations from dkuropatwa.

My first month of 2010/365

I made it a month. I am trying to do a 2010/365 project this year. So far so good. It is really changing the way I see my life and my day. I am always on the lookout for an interesting shot to tell a story about what happened that day or to improve my photography.

Even on runs now I have my DSLR in its backpack ready to be pulled out when the "perfect shot" is possible. Makes running slower but I am having fun. Here is my first month. May the second month be as much fun.

I recommend this to anyone with a camera. Start now and enjoy the story telling potential that your camera give you.


Created with flickr slideshow.

My 250th Post... and a Black Violin

We saw an excellent performance today.  A group called Black Violin.  The students loved the performance.  They travel all over the place and if you have a chance to see them please go and enjoy one of the best shows I have seen in ages.  Here is the slideshow of todays performance.




Here are some videos...




Once again. Go see them if you ever have the chance!

Haitian Relief What Happened

WE DID IT!!

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

Sargent Park School raised $2100 for Haitian Earthquake Relief.  When you couple this with the Canadian Governments matching all donations we raised $4200.  This is very respectable for a school of only 1000 students.  How did this all happen? Let's go back in time....

Earlier in the week I had been showing "The Big Picture" photo essays from Haiti.  This started the classes thinking.  At a blog post I requested the students to leave comments behind on what could be done at Sargent Park School.

These are the comments they came up with!! Now they had to make it happen!! We had a meeting and the Grade 8 students asked the Student Council if they could use a Fine Friday to help Haiti.  The student council agreed and the ball was set in motion.



Three teams of students created presentations to show to the school.  Each presentation based on the age level of the students watching.  We chose K to 3 for one assembly, 4 to 6 for another assembly and finally we had the Grade 7 and 9 students.  The Grade 8 students did not come to the assemblies because they had already had many information sessions about what was happening in Haiti already.

It was great to see the STUDENTS taking charge of the situation.  They were empowered to be the ones in charge.  Granted I set the ball in motion and planted the seeds BUT they took the initiative to get the whole school involved.

Fine Friday is a great fundraiser.  The school suspends "rules" that can be circumvented by paying a fine.  We chose 3 rules; no hats, no iPods in class and no stuffed animals in the classroom.  All of these school based rules would be waved on the Friday if the students payed a fine of a dollar.  This meant that the students bring in $1 to $3 donate to Haitian Relief.

As you can see from the first picture we did it.  Every student on average brought in $2.  Over 95% of the student participated.  There are no costs involved so everything was pure profit as a fundraiser. Both teachers and the students were impressed with the amount of money raised.

All of this activity falls back into the 2 Minutes to Make a Difference Movie Project that will be finished by late April.  I hope that the students now realize that One student or person CAN make a difference.

My Continuing Smartboard Odyssey

Today the students took control of the Smartboad and the Ustream Channel.  They were the ones correcting their work and it went OK.  I need to get them to practice writing more on the board.  There is a skill to not touching the board with their hand.  After yesterdays post on using Ustream I received a comment from Ian H.  He recommended  Webcam Max as a PC alternative to using Camtwist to stream the desktop to ustream. 

The kids took control and here is what they did. I use links and screen captures because the old Macs in my room do not like to wait and process all the embedding. 

Correcting Question 1

Correcting Question 2

Correcting Question 3 and beyond