Social Media in the Math Classroom
Iam a teacher and PhD action re- searcher, and I have been integrat- ing social media into my face-to-face classes for years. Many students
today have knowledge that enables
them to create, connect, and form
partnerships in the learning process.
Unfortunately, that knowledge is not
widely used in the classroom.
Over time and through the action
research cycle, I have found that I
needed to respect my students’ input
in their learning and create a partnership with them. By integrating social
media into the classroom and by designing creative learning activities, I
have been able to move away from the
concept of the teacher telling students
what to do and how to do it.
For each of the past three semesters,
I have designed and created an online
social media discussion environment
using a Ning ( ghs2011.ning.com/
group/mashups), where all my students interact, collaborate, post content on blogs and discussion forums,
make online friends, and learn from
each other.
It would have been easy to use the
Ning solely for the purpose of providing information, class timelines,
formulae, and links to basic resources.
The challenge was to promote creative
thinking and to share that thinking
across grade levels and subject areas. So
I used the Ning as a one-stop shop to
post dynamic projects, which also involved peer critical feedback and peer
assessment. It was similar to Facebook,
but I moderated membership and
