Illinois Math Ed Bloggers

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Being a new Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics board member has me thinking about ways to connect more teachers across the state. I want to put my obsession knowledge of social media/blogs/Twitter to some good use!

I've been the main editor of the Facebook page for ICTM for some time now (like the page, if you haven't yet!). I also recently volunteered to help with the Twitter account (@MathICTM). I really want to expand the use of these tools to help more Illinois math teachers feel connected outside of our annual conference. While there are some teachers that participate in #MTBoS, I want to bring more of that to our state.

A Twitter chat might be one way we could do this. I'm still thinking on this because timing is important to help build momentum and make sure it is sustainable. Evenings are pretty busy for me right now with the kiddos, so I've not been participating in as many chats as I had in the past. I'm sure this busy bedtime phase will pass, so I'll be back to my old, Twitter-chatting self soon.

The other idea I had was to reach out to the math education bloggers in the state. I made a Google Form to gather a list of Illinois math education bloggers. If you blog, be sure to fill it out! So far we have 9 bloggers. I made this interactive ThingLink to make it easier for people to follow the blogs.


(click on the image to see the 9 "pins")

In addition, I plan to highlight 1 blog per week starting in January on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. I'm looking forward to this blogger-focus and hoping it brings more traffic to the blogs and also connects more math educators.



If you have any other ideas for how I might encourage more virtual collaboration using social media, I would love to hear it!

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