This year Maths Week takes place in Ireland from 15th to 22nd October. Already in its sixth year, the event has gained huge popularity. This year, I’ve decided to try out a Twitter project for the week to help children to learn their times tables. If you’re interested in joining in, all you need is a Twitter account. If you’ve already got one, you can skip the next paragraph.
Signing up for Twitter is really easy. The first step is to go to http://www.twitter.com in your browser. On the right hand side of the screen, you simply need to fill in 3 boxes and you’ll be signed up. Writing your first tweet is as simple as typing in a sentence. Just make sure it’s less than 140 characters. You’ll probably also want to follow some people and there are plenty of recommendations on this site.
The project is called “Tables Tips” and the idea is to crowdsource as many tips for learning multiplication tables as possible. For example:
A cool way to remember 7×8 is to look at it this way: 56=7×8 so it’s 5, 6, 7, 8.
Now, for this to show up on Twitter, you need to use something called a hashtag. A hashtag looks like this: #
As I’m calling this project Tables Tips the hashtag is going to be #tablestips. If you want your tip to learn tables to show up, you’ll need to add it to your tweet. So using the above example:
A cool way to remember 7×8 is to look at it this way: 56=7×8 so it’s 5, 6, 7, 8 #tablestips
The only thing to remember is that your tip must be less than 140 characters including the hashtag.
After Maths Week is over, I’ll be collating all the tips that you’ve added and publishing them in a special downloadable Maths Week document that everyone can use!
If you’ve any questions, click the contact button and I’ll do my best to help.