3 Ways to Integrate Blogs into Math Class

I have not used blogs in my teaching yet and I find it difficult to come up with math blog ideas. I often feel that our curriculum is too procedural based, but blogging could be a useful way of developing a deeper connection with the concepts.

My first idea for using blogs in a math classroom is to have the students capture their encounters with mathematics in their everyday lives (MST standard 3, 6, and 7). Students could write their experience, show pictures, or use videos to share their real-world math experiences. The article, “From Toy to Tool: Audio Blogging with Cell Phones”, by Liz Kolb, describes how students can use cell phones with blogs to capture interviews, pictures, and videos. This would be a great tool that most students have on hand to help them with the assignment. Also the blog would allow other students to comment on the encounters and share similar experiences. This would be a great way to help students see that math really is everywhere.

       Article: "From Toy to Tool: Audio Blogging with Cell Phones", by Liz Kolb

Another topic students could blog about is the graphing calculator (MST standard 5 and 6). There are many ways to find solutions on the graphing calculator so it might be interesting to have students discuss how they found the answer to a certain problem. For example, to find the solution(s) of a parabola and a line there are many ways to calculate the coordinate solution point(s). Students could suggest looking at the table, calculating the intersection, or estimating the intersection. Students would have the opportunity to try the different processes and also discuss which method they feel is the most efficient.

Finally, students could share links with each other (MST Standard 5). Students could research certain topics for review activities, re-teach sites, and more. Through the blog students could create a library of resources with a short description of each link. These links would provide excellent study help.