Digital Journals and Blogging

 I am so excited to incorporate writing in my math class during the new semester. My goal is to have students use blogging as an instructional tool to write and express their mathematical ideas. I hope to provide them with an opportunity to reflect on their understanding of mathematics.

Blogging and technology are 2 tools that go hand-hand. Blogging makes integrating technology in the classroom easy. I researched and wanted to find the easiest blogging site for me to use with my students. I found, Kid Blogs. Kids Blogs provided me with the opportunity to create one room and add each student to the room. To easily access student’s account as needed, I created the username and password for each student. There was no downloads or checking your email to activate the account. It was a perfect solution for my goal.

Now that I had the site, I needed to decide how I would effectively use blogging in my class. Blogs can be used as a classroom blog where I post assignments, classroom updates, and more. I could also use blogs as digital journals, exit slips, or a digital portfolio. Since my goal was to integrate writing to express mathematical ideas, I decided to use our blog as a digital journal.

Students will be required to write a blog entry on topics, questions, and problems assigned by me. They will be required to share their understanding of a topic, provide a response to a question, or solution to a problem. To allow students to reflect on their understanding and learning, topics, questions, and problems will be assigned to each student at the end of each class. Students will post their blog entry at the beginning of the next class meeting. To reflect on their peers understanding and learning, each student will be required to effectively respond to at least 2 of their peer posts.

Since blogs are stamped with the date and time, I can easily assess students understanding and provide feedback. Using blogging as a digital journal, students will be able to reflect on their overall progress in the understanding and communicating of mathematics. Student’s use of blogging will provide them with the opportunity to improve their writing and reading comprehension skills.  Most importantly blogging will allow me to promote a positive engaging learning environment for my students.

My students have already experienced microblogging through Twitter and Today's Meet, so this should be a great experience for them. We will still microblog for our warm-ups, exit slips, and collaboration.

Stay tune for the outcome...I know it will be a great success!

Micro-Blogging Projects with Rubrics!

Visit our Printable, Directions, Lessons, Oh My!  for a sample blog project to try!

Micro-Blogging and Writing in Math with Twitter

I am so excited to begin writing in math using micro-blogging digital tools. Our class will be using Twitter to begin writing in Math . I created a class Twitter account and came up with 25 writing prompts for students to write on. I will randomly give each student a different prompt to add variety to our Twitter page. Students will tweet their prompt and other students will reply to their tweets.

Step 1: Create a class Twitter account.
Step 2: Have students create a Twitter account.
Step 3: Assign a time to integrate writing into the classroom.
Step 4: Create prompts for your class to tweet on...Click here for a project with rubric: Twitter Math Prompts.

Tips:
~Protect your tweets and make them private.
~Have students create an account using at least thier name, so you can recognize them for assessment purposes.

Other ways to use Twitter in Math!

1.    Data Project: To collect data to create bar graphs and circle graphs. Students will poll followers on Twitter to collect their data.
2.    Polling: Create a twitter poll to collect data for graphing, prior knowledge assessment, etc. http://twtpoll.com/ (Starts at $9 per month).
3.    Closures: Students tweet a summary of what they learned in class on a specific topic/concept
4.    Vocabulary Reviews: Give each student a different vocabulary word and have them tweet the definition, a picture, etc.

 

 

Read more ways on Edudemic's site!