Social Networking with Great Mathematicians

I worked with 7th Math students today to help them upload a faux profile on our in-house #Elgg social networking site for The Great Mathematican Project. They had to locate an image for the profile, flesh out the About Me, Interests, and Location sections before clicking each of their interests to see which other mathematician also shared that characteristic. They used Inspiration to create a concept map showing how their particular mathematician was connected to other mathematicians (through location, research, number theory, painting, education, etc.) and uploaded these files to their profile as well. Finally, students wrote a couple of blog entries with this character’s voice.

I love teaching and learning, and I was psyched to add to my eclectic body of trivia the following anecdote shared by one of the 7th graders: While working on the lovely and inspiring pyramid for The Louvre, Chinese architect I. M. Pei was spit on by Parisians! I paused the class to talk about the irony of the French denigrating the creator of one of their main attractions.

Read the student’s faux blog post below and the comment by fellow classmate, Stephen Hawking, here: