Student Blogs in High School Math

Few words strike fear into the heart of a math teacher like “Writing across the curriculum”.  Over the years I have tried to cooperate, I have tried to incorporate more writing (or any writing) into my lessons with little success.

Well this year as I was researching how to implement Gamification into my AP Statistics classroom I found an assignment from an AP Calculus teacher (Thank you Mr. Haselwood).  The assignment was for writing a weekly blog and the instructions (adapted here for my Statistics class) said,
“Your AP Statistics blogs should include things you struggle with, things you work hard on, cool things you have discovered, amazing insight that has been revealed!
Whatever is in your brain about math or statistics:  your amazing calculator, the crazy AP Stats Guy videos, the Random Event of the Day, levels and coins for our Statistics Game Quest… whatever it is, put it into your blog.”

I chose http://www.KidBlog.com to host my student blogs.  It is free for 30 days (plenty of time to see how you like it) and then the fee is $36 per year for 1 teacher with unlimited classes (up to 200 students per class). Teachers review and approve blogs before anyone else can see them. Students chose the privacy level for their blogs; teacher only, classmates only or public.

We have just gotten started, but I am already very pleased with the response from my students.  I can’t wait to see what else they have to say.

If you visit my Class Blog Page, you will only be able to see the blogs that have been set to “public”.
kidblog.org/class/rhhs-ap-statistics/posts

If you like this or if you have any suggestions or variations, please comment below. 🙂
Follow me to see more ideas from my classroom.