Serano's Writing Piece Gains Acclaim
Meme Article Has Washington Township Math Teacher Published as Co-Author in Education Technology Textbook
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP – Creativity and laughs aren’t exactly two traits often associated with mathematics. But that’s exactly what has made Washington Township High School teacher Sharon Serano an unlikely contributing author to a published book.
Early in 2016, Serano penned an article entitled “5 ways to use memes with students,” which was published on the EdTekHub online journal. Highly successful from the beginning, Serano’s piece still gets tons of hits. Enough that the International Society of Technology Education was eager to use it as part of its collaborative new book, EdTech for the K-12 Classroom.
“Your article continues to be one of the best performing articles on our site,” ISTE Senior Editor Diana Fingal wrote to Serano.
So, just like that, the veteran WTHS teacher was a bona fide contributor to a full-fledged hardcover (and online) book.
“It is just awesome. It’s unbelievable,” said Serano, thrilled to see her name in print. “I never even, at any point, thought I’d ever write an article. It never crossed my mind. But here I am.”
Amazingly, Serano basically fell into the article. While working on her master’s degree at Rowan University – with an emphasis on educational technology – Serano was driving herself crazy. The stress of grad school added to creating lesson plans for her WTHS students even rubbed off on her son, Anthony. He texted his mother a meme – a communication tool, frequently humorous, that is represented by an image with a caption overload – of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (from Star Trek) with his hand covering his face and the caption, “When Mrs. Serano Gives More Homework.”
“I started laughing, and it dawned on me that I could have my students do math memes for extra credit,” Serano said.
Pi Day (March 14th) was coming up, so Serano collected the students’ memes – more than 100 were submitted – and put them all together in a video that they watched on that day. The video, with views from around the world, got thousands of hits on YouTube, and continues to be a success.
That led Serano to utilizing memes as a humorous introduction to each of the 11 sections in her grad school final project. It also gave her to another idea.
“I thought, ‘Why aren’t memes being used in the classroom? This is fun!’” Serano said. “Which got me to thinking, ‘How else can we use memes with students? Let me put this idea together. Let me see if I can even write an article.’”
Serano called on the assistance of Rowan professor Dr. Lara Englishhill, who gave her suggestions on what to include in the article, and that submitting to the ISTE was her best bet. Two of her friends helped edit the article and, much to her surprise, ISTE published it online in the EdTekHub journal. Its popularity maintains two years later, as Serano gets emails from the site Academia.edu letting her know when her article is referenced in another academic paper. It’s about five per month, she said.
Now that she’s a co-author of EdTech for the K-12 Classroom, that number could rise higher.
“I’ve really been surprised by the response it’s gotten,” Serano said. “I’m thrilled that other people besides me think that memes are good creative outlet and educational tool. It’s awesome to get recognized.”
- WTPS -