Analogue teaching in a digital world?
The time is fast approaching for me to start teaching my boy how to tell the time.
I’m just not sure whether I need to teach him analogue time first.
The clocks he sees are:
In his room is a digital clock and an analogue one. (Analogue one has cows, pigs and sheep on, ticks annoyingly load if you ask me.)
Computer clock.
Clock in lounge is digital.
Cellphone clocks are digital.
One other analogue clock in the dining room (It has Roman numbers- Do I need to teach him the roman numbers before I can teach time the time?)
So my question to you is:
Do I teach Analague time first and then move onto Digital?
Hmmm a good question. For a slightly different perspective I thought I might talk about how I use analogue time to help kids gain other skills in Mathematics. Knowing how an analogue clock works has helped my children to gain an understanding of halves, quarters, fifths and tenths. It makes the idea of 60 minutes & 12 hours more immediately visible than a digital clock. It has helped them to visualise half and quarter turns when learning about positional language, as well as 180 & 90 degree angles later on when they’re older. We have also used it to help us learn to skip count in 5s and when we link the digital language to the analogue we have been able to use this to help us work out the answers to our 5 times tables.
Phew!!
Having said that – do we need to learn analogue time? I’m not sure that we really do, and certainly all of those skills could be learnt in other ways. We still can get analogue clocks & watches though – so it doesn’t hurt. (And when there is a power cut my analogue clocks/watches are most useful).
Maybe it’s like the arts of knitting, spinning, embroidery, glass blowing etc – we don’t necessarily need to do these things any longer, but some times it’s nice to just for the challenge of it and to keep it ‘alive’.
Just my thoughts whilst wearing my Maths teacher hat rather than my ICT one.
Kirstin
Whatever you decide – these will help.
http://delicious.com/AllanahK/Time