Blogging Ideas in my Math Classroom

After reading different ideas of how to incorporate blogging into the classroom I got some ideas of how to apply that to math. I read a lot of ideas that I think would work better in Humanities classrooms, but being the thinker I was hit with ideas.

The first idea that hit me was having students write about mathematicians. I had to prepare a number of books that related to math for a Young Adult and Children's literature class and one of the books I included was a collection of biographies of mathematicians. So that project got me thinking about having student's do a report on a mathematician of their choice. Now I think I could implement that idea using blogs. I would have students pick some famous mathematician or modern mathematician. I would allow a class period to help the students choose and provide them with resources. I would have them all blog about their chosen mathematician and have them read other students blogs. I would require them to comment on other students blogs. I think I would try to group the students together by their mathematicians that had related fields or lived in a certain time period. This way students could easily see the similarities as well as some differences. Also grouping students would make it easier since the students would not have to read as many blogs. I think this would improve their writing and research skills as well as gain an insight of how exactly these ideas about math came about.

Another big idea behind using blogging in and out of the classroom is having a discussion. I thought really hard about what discussions questions I could pose to my students that related to math. After taking lots of upper level math classes in college I always thought about how some of it is definitely applicable to high school math and how high school students could be really engaged by these topics. I think posing a question each week that has the students extend what they are learning in the classroom and think about some higher based questions. I would find a topic that relates to what we are learning that week and just have students post their thoughts to the question. They could talk through how to solve it and possible answers. They would not have to be right or wrong just work on their problem solving thinking. Students could work together to find the answer. I want to bring in some upper level mathematics thinking into my classroom, however if I don't have time to address it in the classroom I can have students blog about it outside the classroom. I can provide some time in-class to work on it as well, but using blogging as a tool can allow for more time on the subject. I could also meet individually with students to see what their thinking is and help them deal with any frustrations they have while other students are blogging.

Another use for blogging I found was to have students be a scribe for the day and have them post the notes for the day on a blog. I think this would be useful for any classroom and any subject. I think it would be useful to look at for students who were gone that day and need the notes. It would also let each student have a turn of taking responsibility for the class and practice good note taking skills. I had to do something similar to this in my senior seminar class where we took turns recording solutions to problems and then had to type them up. Then when we finished a chapter the class edited the typed up solutions and then they were published in our senior thesis book. This way we all took turns writing the book for our class. This could make my classroom a mini-university and help prepare students for college. It may convince students they are able to go to college or more fully prepare them. They may not want to go to college and take this skill to use in their profession. It is a simple way to have students learn important life skills and technology.