Social Math and Kids: A Study
March 4th, 2009I need your help to research an urgent question: is math lagging behind other human endeavors on the social web? If you can, please distribute this to blogs, mailing lists and other forums.
The goal is to collect answers from at least two hundred parents or teachers of children who are active on the social web. Some examples of social web sites include: blogs, wikis, nings, email groups, multi-player online games, forums, Facebook, My Space, Twitter, Flickr, and Youtube. The purpose of this study is to investigate how much math can be found in the user-generated content on the web, that is, pictures, videos, texts, software and other entities created by children as they participate in the social sites. The social web has led to an explosion in authoring, empowering our children as never before. Does it empower them in mathematics as well? Let’s find out!
Copy and paste these questions to answer them:
- How old are your children?
- Approximately when did they start to use social web sites?
- Please name some of the sites your children visit frequently.
- What do your children mostly contribute to their social sites,
for example, tags, links, chats, stories, comments, pictures, videos?.. - What are some examples of math-related items your children have
recently encountered at their social sites? - Do you know of math-related items your children have contributed
to social web sites? Please give some examples. - How would you describe your level of proficiency using web-based
applications? How about other adults in your family?
To participate, post answers to the Natural Math blog post at:
http://www.naturalmath.com/index.php?option=com_jd-wp&Itemid=88888917&p=88,
or email them to Dr. Maria Droujkova at droujkova@gmail.com,
or reply wherever you find these questions posted.
You can see study progress updates and some examples of social mathematics in comments at the study post on the Natural Math blog.
Thank you in advance!
Examples of social mathematics:
A blog discussion.
Places this survey is posted:
March 15:
Mathematics 24×7 ning
March 7:
TwitterMoms: The influential moms network
Classroom 2.0 ning
MariaD’s Twitter
Natural Math google group
March 4:
MariaD’s Natural Math blog
Number of families who answered so far:
March 9: 3
March 7: 2
March 4: 1
I think what you’re seeing is not really specifically how math is endangered on the web, but how it’s endangered in our lives. People put stuff on social networking sites if
(a) it’s important to them
(b) they think it’s cool
(c) they think other people will think it’s cool
etc.
Social networking is where you see what people really care about, and, unfortunately, for most people math is just a forced chore they would rather forget.
I actually started to collect (but I don’t know where I put it) examples of people who “discovered” math later in life, finding, to their great surprise, that it was actually useful and fun. I’ll see if I can find some examples and post them here.
1. my son is 6 1/2. he doesn’t use web 2.0 sites. (If that would mean making content himself. )
2. What he does online is look at legos stuff to buy, play hotwheels games, watch crazy frog and gummy bear videos on youtube, and play a few mathy games like bloxorz and a few others at the coolmath site. This is all pretty recent.
3. He doesn’t do this.
4. We looked at that youtube video of the yoshimoto cube.
5. n.a.
6. I use the web a lot, but I mostly just read and post replies. I’ve posted photos in a few places, but I don’t think I’ve posted anything more complicated than that. I have accounts on more sites than I can possibly remember. I’ve met people through okcupid.com, a free dating site. I’ve bought and sold stuff through criagslist. I find businesses all the time through the web, and buy lots of books online. I use maps from yahoo or google a lot. I just joined paperbackswap.com. I think that’s all pretty basic uses. ;>
Hope this is useful info! :>
1. my daughter is 14.5.
2. she started with webkins, then used some linked DS games. Just recently, she has become addicted to google chats. But she doesn’t leave much of a trail on the web other than chats. She’s nervous about doing that.
3. Please name some of the sites your children visit frequently.
She has been following several you tube site but not communicating with them.
4. not much
5. Natural Math
6. Natural Math through the math club.
7. high
other adults in your family: medium