Mathematical videos, social semiotics and the changing classroom

Abstract

With the advancement of digital technology, the roles of teachers and students are slowly changing. The classroom is on the verge of becoming a new, more open place, one with fewer barriers to the rest of society. Our purpose in this paper is to discuss how the creation of videos with mathematical content may contribute to this process of rendering the classroom borderless, as well as how this activity can become a teaching and learning tool. We ground our discussion in social semiotics, a theory that considers the context of production and the negotiations between actors to analyze the meanings produced. We report on the production of videos by middle school students and the steps involved: discussion, editing and dissemination. At each step, data were produced and collected. We focus our analysis on the question of how the production of videos in the classroom can help in the communication of mathematical knowledge and in the change of the dynamics of the classroom. We find that video production provides a classroom dynamic in which students can become protagonists in the teaching and learning process, with teachers mediating this activity. We argue that video production is a different way to express mathematics, and it is particularly well-suited to expressing what students have understood. Using videos, a new kind of mathematics can emerge in the classroom, joining its traditional symbolic language with other modes, such as language, gesture, image and music.