Using Blog Buttons for some REAL Math

I'm linking up with TECHNOLOGY TAILGATE this week for Techie Tuesday. Head on over if you want to see some great technology ideas. I  love participating in Farley's monthly "Currently" linky party HERE. So as I was linking up last week, I noticed that I was number 300 and something - now it's over 400 - and that all the blog buttons looked so neat and cute at the end of the post. I began to wonder how many states are represented, how many grade levels/special areas, are there home-schooling moms?? All of a sudden I got a great idea - students could use these blog buttons to gather that type of data. And at the same time they will be using math skills for a real, relevant reason. I have decided to do this activity with my fourth graders. I will divide the students up into small groups of four and divide the buttons by the number of groups. I have two classes of fourth graders so I will have about 14 groups. I am going to allow each group to decide how to divide up the "work load". They will be responsible for finding out the state and grade level of each blog - if possible. They will have a recording sheet. We have plenty of computers so I think each group will divide up their blogs and each gather the data and then come together to analyze their results. I found the link below for a state abbreviation/name match that I will let the groups work on together first. Then they can use the abbreviations to create a tally sheet for the states on a piece of notebook paper. I will have them list the states alphabetically on their paper. I will have a grade level sheet also to tally the different grade levels.  Finally, we will look at all the sheets to compile the results. I would like to then introduce the graphing feature of Microsoft word and have each student complete a graph of the state data. Great way to introduce and  review so many things: data collection, graphing, tally marks, state abbreviations and names, counting, finding blog author info, and 6 of our COS objectives are met as well! I would love to hear any other ideas you have about this project. Please leave me a comment!  I also see where this could be a great project to work on with another class at your school or a project with a class at another school - you could Skype to share results. I am so excited about this project - I will definitely share the results and my reflections on what did/did not work so check back for a future post!  

Resources: State Names and Abbreviations Matching Worksheet