Elementary Mathematics Livebinder

My goal with Livebinder was to create a math binder that I could share with colleagues, parents and students. Since I enjoy elementary mathematics, engage in reading in the subject and also have had the chance to experience some fantastic professional development on the subject people often ask me for resources, something I would love to share but have not had the platform to do so until now. Social bookmarking has helped me “organize, classify and share web content” (Trexler, 2010). In the past, when I wanted to share websites or other online information I would have to email favourites or bookmarks I had on my computer. This became confusing as I have a personal and a work computer, and I would often have to search through both to find what I was looking for. Also, when searching online for games and research I often forget to bookmark my findings and waste time later looking for the information again. As mentioned by Berger, “tagging is about remembering … as the content is not being created through social bookmarking but connections are being made within the tagging community membership” (Trexler, 2010) With a tool such as Livebinder, I can have access from any computer at any time making it much more user friendly to engage with.

Throughout this week I have worked on tagging many of the webpages I have found useful or enjoyable. I find Livebinder very user relevant and have focused on mathematics and those who encounter it at the elementary school level. I started with games I encourage my students to play for practice and review and tagged many of those. Afterwards I tagged information for other teachers, which includes curriculum information, professional development opportunities and teaching ideas. I wanted to provide information for parents especially when it comes to strategies for teaching math at home. There are many sites that include ideas for parents when it comes to teaching concepts at home and how to make the information interesting and understandable for their child. During many of my professional development experiences leaders often show fantastic clips they find on Ted Talks or other such podcast sites. There are some very inspirational and informative podcasts that I wanted to share on my Livebinder as well. Currently I have them posted under teacher resources but as I find more I want to share then I will create its own tab for videos.

The next step in my exploration with Livebinder will be to engage in collaborative tagging as “one of the real advantages of social bookmarking is the ability to share what you find with others and see what they have ‘tagged’ perceiving additional uses” (Trexler, 2010, p. 52).  I will send my livebinder account information out to my colleagues, students and their parents and see what information they can add to my binder.

In my classroom I would like to use a social bookmarking tool when my students are researching. My students are too young to properly write a bibliography and I find it takes forever if they are asked to produce one. Often the students are required to site the source they used the most, however this generally ends up being Wikipedia. “ Social bookmarking comes into play during the investigation phase of inquiry, when students locate resources, evaluate and organize them” (Trexler, 2010, p. 52), which are all important parts of the learning process, especially in grade 4. It will also be useful to me as a teacher to see where the students have been viewing their information and in projects where more than one student is working on a topic; they will be able to share their learning and research with each other.

There is so much potential for Livebinder as an educator. Please feel free to add your tags to my My Livebinder!

Works Cited

Trexler, S. Berger, P. (2010). Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and teaching in a Digital World. Santa Barbara, California, USA: Libraries Unlimited.