CAN HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS USE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE MATH CLASSROOM?

For my genius hour project, I want to investigate how the use of social media platforms, specifically Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter, can be used to enhance the learning experience for high school students. The specific research question I want to ask is "How can high school teachers use Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter to incorporate statistics into the math classroom?" I chose this because over the past few years social media has became so much more prevalent in our lives. The younger generations are using social media for all of their information on sports, news and current events. Incorporating some of the information that they are consuming over these platforms will help teachers relate to students and make the classroom more interactive.

This question relates to my life because I am hoping to go into the sports media industry after graduation. The sports media industry is increasing its emphasis on social media because the younger generation is turning to it for statistics, live sports coverage and insider information on their favorite teams at a rapidly increasing pace. I wanted to discover how that shift is impacting the classroom and how teachers can adapt with that shift.

This is relevant to K-12 education because it is the younger generation that is encouraging teachers to be aware and knowledgeable on social media forms. There is a whole world of information that is being consumed that some older people are unaware of. I think investigating ways that teachers can use statistics from social media in the math classroom will create a more engaging and interactive environment especially for high schoolers who are surrounded by these platforms daily.

I believe that this question will certainly be relevant for high school math teachers to come up with creative ways to incorporate numbers that are found on social media and that students care about in their everyday learning. For example, teachers can have students looks up baseball stats using Facebook and have them calculate batting averages. This incorporates technology and student voice in the classroom.

To begin my research, I am going to start looking at the SM Sports Listserv that I recently subscribed to. They send out new information on innovations in sports technology and how they are affecting the industry. They focus on how social media is affecting the industry and this will show me good platforms to look for statistics to use in the math classroom. I will also take a look at the social media platforms that I have chose to focus on and investigate how they collect data on who is using which platforms. For example, Twitter creates public analytics for each post.

On Twitter some relevant accounts to follow would be Sport Techie (@SportTechie) because they post updates on the latest sports and social media advancements which are good places to find statistics. Also the food and agricultural organization of the United States has a statistics Twitter page (@FAOstatistics) which may be a good place to find statistics on relevant events. One person account I found was a man named Chris Aviles (@TechedupTecaher) who is very active in the tech world and focuses on how teachers can incorporate current tech trends into their classroom.

Some relevant hashtags would be #statistics which would be useful in finding posts containing statistics. Also, #socialmediaintheclass shows teachers using social media for educational purposes. #teachingstrategies and #highschoolmath both would be good to investigate because they could give unique ideas of how to teach basic math practices.

Other relevant links are this blog from a high school math teacher with different teaching strategies. This website details ways social media is entering the classroom and how that can be effectively used. This website details the usage of social media in finding statistics on sports and other topics.

Some useful images to communicate my research interests can be viewed below.