702 Blog #6 Video Tools & Flipped/ Blended Lessons
After watching the various videos about blended and flipped classrooms I was feeling very inspired. The Edutopia video was especially motivating to watch as students worked in different groups, some watching a video and taking notes, others in groups working problems, some working at the whiteboard with the teacher. The teacher described it as “organized chaos”. As students finished the work, they would grab an exit ticket and work a problem to show they had mastered the concept. The learning was so collaborative yet individualized. This kind of learning seems very powerful to me. The tools that I tested out from the large palette available is Mote, for verbal feedback, Nearpod, for lesson planning & delivery, and Screencastify, for recorded lesson delivery. I am also using Peardeck, Kami, and Edpuzzle at school and I have used Wevideo in the past. I found Mote to work seamlessly with Google classroom and I love the reports I get back that tell me if students listened to my feedback. I am hoping to get my kids to add Mote to their Chromebooks so they can also give me verbal comments and questions. Mote saves time and I like that kids can hear my tone of comments, which is usually encouraging but occasionally stern. Also Mote could be extra fun if you add in sound effects or a guest voice. Imagine hearing Captain America or Darth Vader recognize the high quality of your assignment! Nearpod was tricky for me. I like the premade lessons a lot, but when I tried to create my own using my slide presentation from the Amplify curriculum we are implementing at Redwood, I struggled. I like the creative options like Climb The Mountain and drawing (it’s like having Kami built into a slidedeck!), but the slides where I just wanted to have kids answer a MC question, the font was very small and not easy to change. Peardeck seems easier to use than Nearpod, but Nearpod did have some quality premade lessons. Of course Peardeck is free for me and Nearpod I would eventually have to buy. Screencastify is still my favorite because it is just so EASY to use and the fact that it meshes with Google Classroom so well. I have not had my students try making videos in screencast yet, but the project that I used for my lesson plan, Newton’s Project, requires kids to present their end product in a photo or video, so this will be a good opportunity for students to learn Screencastify. The main barrier for many of these tools is access. Kids have to have computers and wifi. Our students do have computers. Wifi is still an issue for some, but most have figured out a time to work when the wifi at their home is less taxed, or they got a hot spot. My favorite tools, Mote, Kami & Screencastify combined with Google Slides, are already available to my students in Clever or as add-ons. For me there are a few other tools I would like to get good at like Adobe Spark and Nearpod, but some of these require a financial commitment and I have already paid for Quizlet, and a few science websites, so that limits my access. I like the idea of using videos as a learning tool because it does allow students to control the speed of the learning. I realized a few years ago that the “family movie” experience that I so enjoyed in my classes when we all watched a Bill Nye video together and filled out video questions was headed for the history books because this generation is so used to consuming video content individually on a computer screen that they had trouble concentrating on a big screen across the room. When I assigned the same video to individual viewing they had much better focus and success filling out questions because they could pause and repeat as needed. I have done assessment using videos in Google forms or Edpuzzle and found it to be effective, but I have not had students videotaping themselves to show or explain their knowledge as a form of assessment. This would be fun to try I think.
1 Comment
Scott Marsden
11/24/2020 07:00:42 pm
Betsy,
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AuthorHello! Welcome to my blog! This will be a fun place to share thoughts about teaching and learning. I am a middle school science teacher at Redwood. When I'm not teaching, I'm hanging out at home with my family or enjoying nature somewhere in the valley. Archives
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