Saturday, April 30, 2011

Mindmeister - Math Lesson on Population and Exponential Graphs

Looked through the Internet to find a possible equation to explain population growth and designed a lesson that required the girls to look at world population figures over the decades and make predictions on population growth. Fundamentally, I wanted to girls to realize the function that best decribed the growth is an exponential one.

The lesson went quite smoothly and Wan was at one corner filming my every move but the important visitors had not turned up. I was starting to worry they would not get to see the girls in action.

Just as I got them to work on Mindmeister to think about the consequences of population growth and how the data and information help policy makers make important decisions, DSP came in with a throng of other officials. My mind went blank but apparently the girls did not. They actively discussed and penned down their thoughts into the mindmap and here's their work:


BK said the lesson went well. I think I could have done better and begged him to not let me have to go through such an event again.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Mindmeister

CGS subscribes to Mindmeister and every staff and student has an account which allows them to create unlimited number of mindmaps. How cool is that, right?

Today I got the girls to map out their responses to a piece of situational writing to try out the platform as there is going to a visit by a very important person from the Ministry and Boon Keng, my supervisor, has asked me to present a lesson for observation. I have my reservations but since this becomes my main lesson observation for the year, why not right?

The girls seemed to know how to use the platform really well. This attests to the experiences they must have received in the previous 2 years.


Saturday, April 9, 2011

Voxopop - Picture Discussion

To prepare the girls for their Oral Examination, I created a Voxopop group, entitled the Green Puma, as I received a green Puma watch from my wife. The girls saw that connection and made endless remarks about it ;p

This portal allows users to record directly and even comment via audio recording. Pretty cool!