earthtree.org

SCENARIO 1:
You’ve inspired your students with an amazing demonstration. Direct instruction at its best! It was clear, concise and illuminating. It was exactly what your students needed to gain a deeper understanding of the concept and now they’re ready to apply their new found knowledge. Oh! But what about your students that were absent? Or students who need to experience the lesson again with support, to really get a good grasp? How can your students easily review this lesson later in the year?

SCENARIO 2:
Time for a “Health Day.” You’ve spent hours preparing lesson plans for the guest teacher. It’s a challenge writing plans that both teach the guest teacher and articulate how s/he will teach those concepts. How rigorous are your plans?  Did you introduce new challenges for students to struggle with while providing adequate resources to support them? Or did you come with the review lesson plans that will make it easier for the guest teacher to manage the class?.. and easier to write.

These scenarios are common to the teaching profession. These days it’s super easy to capture and share your lessons. If fact, the most challenging aspect of capturing and sharing your lessons remains thinking them up.  You probably have everything you need to get started. Do you have a laptop or desktop computer with Linux, Mac or Windows operating system? If you have a laptop, chances are it has a built-in mic. If not, you can get a decent mic for under $10. How about a web browser, Chrome, Fire Fox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari? You just need one.

One monumental benefit to screencasting is that you can easily organize your lessons in such a way that students can find just the lesson they need when they need it. If you’ve already established an Internet presence your half way there. The only challenge is that it takes forethought and diligence. It’s not always easy to keep up with creating and posting lessons. But if you do a few each week, you’ll be amazed by work you established in only a month’s time.

Having screencasts of your lessons and demonstrations organized online means that students can access your lessons from nearly anywhere. They can view lessons from home, the library, a corner of your room. They can even view them while your teaching a small group. Imagine, simultaneously teaching three different lessons! The only necessity is that students must have Internet access and a computer. It’s not very hard to find that these days.

This upfront commitment to your students will pay off in the long term. All of your hard work will be rewarded. Students will be able to take advantage of your lessons when they need them. So if they miss school or are expelled, there’s no excuse for not participating in classroom lessons. It’s also a great way to give students more support. Some students just need to be able to hit the pause button in order to digest ideas before going on. They also will have the ability to rewind and repeat.

I mentioned this is useful for students who have missed class. However it’s even more useful when you miss class. With screen casting you can maintain the rigorous standards you have. In fact, you can continue teaching. The Guest Teacher only needs to perform crowd control while you teach the class through projector and speakers. One trick I like to use is making special wallpaper for guest teachers. This way if someone can help them get the computer turned on, then the wallpaper is there to clearly indicate where to start clicking to find out more about the class or to start me up. Here’s an example.

Screencasting takes the focus off from you and put it directly on the learning, where it should be. But be careful. It’s easy to start to over use this technique. It’s also not good for every kind of lesson. Part of the reason you’re a teacher is because you’ve got the charisma needed to inspire students to excel. That’s hard to capture on the computer.

Give it a go! Here are two of my favorite applications, www.jingproject.com and www.screentoaster.com. Both are free and will even store your videos for you. You just need to link to them for your students to find them. By the way, be sure to let your kids take a crack at this too. It’s a wonderful way for them to teach each other. Here’s a teacher’s site full of student work. www.mathtrain.tv

What will you screencast? [Leave a comment below.]

PS. Here’s a screencast example from the above information.

Professional  Development Opportunity

ActivInspire is the newest version of software for Promethean Boards.  This combination in-person and online course will teach you the basics of this updated program and how to integrate it into your daily instruction.  Participants will learn the basics of migrating to ActivInspire, how to create basic flipcharts, use actions and containers, create assessments using ActiVotes, and more.  There will be 2 required face-to-face meetings on October 9 and December 4.  The rest of the class will be held online to better fit busy schedules.

Week 1 – Downloading ActivInspire, Introduction to ActivInspire, Migrating to ActivInspire
Week 2 – Resource Packs and Working with Images
Week 3 – Magic Ink, Spotlight, Revealer, and other Cool Tools
Week 4 – Working with Sound and Video
Week 5 – Layers and Groups
Week 6 – Containers and Actions
Week 7 – Activotes

In Person Meeting Dates: October 9, 2009 and December 4, 2009
Times:  5:00-5:30pm

Location:  6th Avenue Elementary School – Computer Lab

(New assignments will be posted online every Friday. Participants will have one week to complete and post each 2 hour assignment.)

Interested in attending?  Email your questions to Shannon Wentworth scwentworth@aps.k12.co.us at 6th Avenue.

Course registration is available on Avatar.

Here is the ActivStudio flipchart that was used today during the Fulton ActivStudio professional development. It is based on Classroom Instruction that Works.

Here’s “Part 1 of Dr. Robert Marzano addressing the question “What do we know about the effect of technology on student achievement?” at the CUE 2009 Conference on March 6, 2009.” (thanks Ivan)  Not surprisingly his studies show an increase in student achievement when instructional technology is used effectively and a decrease in achievement when instruction is focused on the tool rather than the learning.

The deciding factor of success is whether the teacher has a good understanding of pedagogical and content knowledge prior to using instructional technology. This just underscores for me the importance of teaching how to use instructional technology within the framework of instructional strategies. This is definitely an ongoing pursuit for me, as I tend to skip directly to how to use the technology rather than when or why.

Anyway… if you are preparing to write a grant soon for instructional technology, this is a great resource to book mark. The points that Marzano speaks of, relate directly to the work that the recipients of the DoIT Grant have worked to achieve with the technology they received. They have done some fantastic work! Check out their projects… and be sure to check out Marzano’s presentation.

image by Punya Mishra