The Friday Reflection!

The March of the Wind Mills!
Gunfleet Sands off Clacton on a warm January Day!

First Week of Online Community Projects for 2013!

By +Philip Spalding 

Have spent the last week running the Haverhill Online Learning Community's Maths for Parents Week.   The materials have been shared through Facebook groups such as the local residents associations, the Selling and Free Page, Haverhill Business Group.  A search for Google + users has also taken place and all have been invited to join and contribute. 

After all this effort was only when I emailed one of the Advanced Skills Maths Teachers in Ipswich to aquaint him with the site that I discovered a flaw in the cunning plan.  Fully supportive as he was, he had one question "How do I join?".    Feeling a little puzzled  I wondered what  Don Quoxite moment I had been guilty of, had I been tilting at windmills in my desire to build the community (slight reference to the Wind Turbines in the photograph).  

Taking a little step back, I went to the home page of the page of the website!  What was I missing?  Looking at the so called obvious links of Contact Us, Visit the Google + Community, Facebook and Google Group pages I scratched by head for a few seconds.  They were obviously not doing their job!  Looking again at the question "How do I join?" a slight ray of  light seemed to be there.  Now on the front page of the website (https://sites.google.com/a/kritirecharge2012.co.uk/haverhill-online-learning-community/home) are the words JOIN BY Clicking Here with an embedded web link.  The sidebar also has new a web link to the Google + Community preceded by the word "join", which will take people to the community page where they can join! 

A few SlideSpeech demos, or a You Tube Video may also be needed since the sidebar has started to become a little full!  So hopefully four little words are the solution. Time will tell!  

Will need to get out there and also talk to community groups as well.  The community may have access to the internet but there is not necessarily an awareness of it's full potential.  Facebook for instance may not be the best medium to promote a community based group such as the Haverhill Online Learning Community!  Social media has it's limitations for conversion of contacts to participants!  Recently noticed that a lot of the people offering locally their services as Twitter media consultants have now changed their business activity descriptions to Marketing again!  Difficult to make a living when everybody can do itself, or as usual with local markets word of mouth does your twitter function as it has always done so!

Still it is the end of the Christmas and New Year holiday period.  The Haverhill Online Learning Community is out there!  The field has been built, (Kevin Costner reference) will they come?  Not going to stop making links and contacts, a community of 30 or so active members by mid-February is the first goal!  If you would like to participate, JOIN BY Clicking Here.  Upcoming events are listed in our Calendar (https://sites.google.com/a/kritirecharge2012.co.uk/haverhill-online-learning-community/calendar).  Look forward to speaking to you in the community page!     

Maths Week at HOLC

Website Link 

Making Maths Accessible

Maths is one of those skills that is essential to success in life.  Many of us are very good at maths because it is something that we do everyday of our lives.  Addition and subtraction is used by everybody that handles money.  This is ideally done mentally and rapidly.  In the UK the average Britain is not as skilled in maths as you would expect for a developed country, (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20712312).  Getting a good grounding in maths is vital!

Haverhill Online Learning Community has been running a week of Maths for Parents activities.  While children are still on the holidays we have been supplying a number of resources for use.  The webpage link has some some general information.  Sub pages include Number Square and Primary Maths.  

The page Number Square has a little explanation of the resources and crucially free downloads.  Parents can download the PDF files for use with their children as they develop their Maths skills.  There are two versions of the Number Square, a Number Square with working area and a larger version.  A sample exercise has been included focussing on place value!  A word document will soon appear where parents can make their own place value grids.  SlideSpeech presentations will be added  in due course explaining more of the resources and how to use them.

The Primary Maths page is developing as the launch page for a series of sub-pages   We are covering in Primary Maths, the Early years as well as  Key Stages 1 and 2.  The pages are still being continually added to  as Haverhill Online Learning Community is a dynamic community. A "complete" website will never exist since learning is ever evolving.  One page with content that is already useful (ie has some content) is General Resources across the Primary Maths Key Stages!.  A sub-page of this Vocabulary for Maths!, seeks to inform parents of the vocabulary that their children use in conversations about maths.  Making your own resources from Magnetic A4 sheets for use on the fridge is also touched upon on the page Magnetic Resources.  On the page Useful Website for Maths Help we are starting to gather together a series of links that can be accessed for interested parents to explore further.

Maths for Parents is the first week of 2013.  We are planning another week closer to Key Stage 2 SATS week the page of which also contains some links to useful revision sites!  Maths is also being visited during Adult Learning Week (the date of which can be found looking on the Calendar of Events page).

Next week we will start to focus on Languages.  Haverhill is now a multilingual community.  English, Chinese, Polish, Urdu, Portuguese and Lithuanian are just some of the languages being spoken.  A key aspect of this is the richness languages bring to our local culture.  The Language project can be found at the page A little Good Language!

This is just a small flavour of what will be developing over the next year aimed at the needs and interests of Haverhill Online Learning Community.   Come and join us over the coming months and contribute to Life Long Learning in the Haverhill Area.