Social Media in the Math Classroom.

Most of my students have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms and use them regularly.  I've seen student spend hours on them and wondered if there was a way to include social media in the math classroom.

Some of the reasons for allowing the use of social media are that it allows students to increase their collaboration because they can work in or out of school easily, it allows students to improve their communication skills because even the shyest can contribute, allows students to share resources easier, and it can better prepare them to join the workforce.

I know there are articles out there that explain how to use Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram in your classroom but I tend to hesitate because I'm not comfortable using such a main stream platform.  Over the years, I have used Schoology and Edmoto because I'd learned about them at conferences.  My high school students preferred Schoology over Edmoto but recently, I've relied on google classroom as my platform.  Although Google Classroom is not usually considered social media it is classified as a social network because members of the "class" do not have to be in the same physical location.  Now back to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

The best way to set up a Twitter account for your classroom is to use a Group Tweet account which can be either public or private.  This means they do not need their own twitter account because this group account gives them access and the account keeps a permanent record of all tweets so students don't have to search through all previous hashtags.

A classroom Twitter account allows instant communication between the teacher and students or their parents or students can tweet their questions to the teacher for answers via Twitter or in class. Students can look back to see what they've done over the year.  Furthermore, you can have students summarize what they've learned or it could act as an exit ticket.  For homework, instead of using a worksheet, assign students different problems and they can twitter the answer.

It is also possible to create a Facebook account for your class only by using the privacy settings.  Students can document examples of math they find in the real world and include a short note on the mathematics of it.  Furthermore, Facebook allows teachers to record and store videos for use by the students later on.  In addition, the teacher can create polls for students to participate in,  or they can share educational content, or provide links to documents, or activities.

Even Instagram allows teachers to set up a private instagram account that is totally separate from their personal account.  Once the account its set up, you can post student work, feature a student of the week, share the steps used to complete a certain type of problem, share where you found math used in the real world, post reminders of due dates, answer questions, give a pop quiz in class where student work in groups to find the answer before posting their answers on Instagram.

Before doing any Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with my students, I'd first check my school's policy on use of social media, make sure letters are sent home to parents informing them of the planned use, and make sure you have signed permission to display the photos online.  These are the three most popular social media sites and it is possible, your students know a bit more about using them then you do.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.