Hello. My name is Theodore Chao, I'm an associate professor at The Ohio State University. Dr. Melissa Adams-Corral, Dr. Ayse Ozturk, Ho-Chieh Lin, Angga Hidayat, Ruth Oliwe and I are at the beginning of exploring how children from urban emergent communities can use video storytelling to share about the mathematics in their world.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we shifted our approach from a school-based practice to working with local community centers and hosting our own digital math storytelling camps in Columbus, Ohio!

We're in the 2nd-year of a 5-year project and still figuring out how to support children in crafting, sharing, and refining mathematics stories that connect to their own community and family identities. 

Let us know what you think. And please share any insight or questions you have about getting kids from the YouTube & TikTok generation to make math identity videos!

Dr. Chao- I love the digital math storytelling as a way to build a strong relationship and connection to problem solving :) and the world we live in!!! Story Circles for our young digital natives make this a wonderful form of representing their knowledge of math :) I can't wait to connect with some of the digital artifacts and share with our teachers.... I always loved when kids told me their math happenings over the weekend - I would love to have them use this model to tell their math happenings! Thanks for the inspirations! Do you have a website where you are archiving these digital math stories?  

Having recently watched a child 11 year old try to solve a VERY difficult "word problem" featuring fractions. I would love to have seen her create her own math story rooted in her everyday life. I think remote learning during the pandemic showed us that video can motivate kids to look thoughtfully into all kinds of content. I love the image in your video of the story circle - a community of math awareness! 

Are you probing how these math stories connect to classroom math experiences?

I look forward to watching the discussion of your project unfold.

It was great to have kid voices in the video, they seem pretty interested in looking at math from a storytelling perspective. Can you provide some examples of the kinds of math stories kids develop during the summer camps?

Do you see an overlap between stories based on math vs. stories based on exploring data? There are some interesting projects out there with a focus on data stories. Perhaps there are some synergies with that work and this project.

Great for kids to see math is embedded in their every day life and to bring that forward through stories. I think the challenge to make a Tiktok type video of their math life is a great one!  One question remains--did she make 8 out of 10 baskets ;)

Nice project! I love the idea of connecting participants' own stories with math. It seems like a great way for getting learners interested and invested.

WOW what a cool project ... I wonder whether we can incorporate some of that into our work?

So great to see you, Teddy! I'm also thinking about connections to my Montana Models project. We are working on expanding the ways students might tell their stories. This is really inspiring! Thanks so much for sharing your work! 

I love the concept and execution of this project. Stories surround us all the time. We simply have to pay attention. That truth is certain present in math, and this project opens an avenue to help kids engage and be creative while they learn. Fantastic!

Hi my name is Chanda Jefferson and I am so happy to join the conversation! Thank you for sharing about your project. I like the storytelling aspect of this project and when students are given the opportunity to take ownership of their learning they create masterpieces. I am a biology teacher and growing up I experienced “math trauma”. I made it through math by memorizing steps, as opposed to learning and developing a deep understanding of foundational mathematics concepts. I would like to know how mathematics teachers can use some of your strategies in the classroom? Were you able to reach more students when you transitioned from the school settings to community centers? Students love making videos, so this project is definitely a game changer for the future of math pedagogical practices. Love this!

Hi Teddy, Ho-Chieh, and the math storytelling team! It is great to see the work that you are doing to engage students in math early on in their educations. The digital storytelling approach seems especially important in the COVID-19 era, and I look forward to hearing more about how you develop this innovation. Thanks for this critical work.

 Thank you so much for the nice comments, Prof. Nunez! Glad you like our project :)

Great project! Thanks for sharing it!

Hello,

I am Ruth Oliwe. I am a member of the Digital Math Storytelling Team working with Dr. Theodore Chao at The Ohio State University.

Thank you all for stopping by to learn more about our Digital Math storytelling project and sharing your thoughts with us. We are glad that you find our project interesting and particularly useful in helping kids learn and know more about math in a fun and creative way.

We are excited about working on this project and it's been an amazing journey so far. We look forward to sharing more of our works with you all.

Thank you.

Nice to see what you are up to, Teddy.

What wonderful work that empowers students to see themselves in math and its beauty!  I am big fan of this work. Thank you for sharing your story.

I love this!  It is really important to make those connections between mathematics and real life, and storytelling is a wonderful and meaningful mechanism for doing that. In fact, I  would love to connect to find out more about what you are doing and how it might relate to past development work I was involved in at NYSCI funded by the Gates Foundation.   Referred to as Noticing Tools, we created a suite of apps for Ipads that allow kids to make mathematics discoveries in the context of creating compelling digital design projects-- from forced perspective photography to animated stories that also make use math like coordinate grids and fractions as tools to make your creations.  We conducted a small implementation study with English Language Learners that gives a picture of what they can do.  I felt that the tools were most powerful when storytelling was a component of what kids did with them.   This video might be useful.  For ELLs, it really extended the math discourse that children engaged in and gave teachers a real sense of the children's mathematical thinking.  No need to comment now, but would love to hear your thoughts if there are any chances for synergies to work together in the future!   In another vein, I am curious what you are planning to do to assess any changes in students' understanding of math concepts and practices and how their construct of what mathematics changes as a result of participation.

Fabulous project! Incredibly important for valuing the uniqueness of each individual in our society and for emphasizing that relationship of one's unique self with mathematics. Love it! Excited to learn more from you, Teddy and Ho-Chieh!