Well this school year is over. I got sidetracked after ICE and did not post as much as I should have. Sorry about that.
This year has been quite a journey. Made a lot of progress, and made a lot of mistakes.
I feel pretty good about next year already from my math curriculum videos. I am going to have to set them up and refine them more, but going into the year I have a big head start.
I wish I had started planning on being interesting instead of just methodical. That would have made it more likely for the students to watch the videos.
One of my goals of the summer is to sit back and take it all in. Once I do I will post some more of the things I wish I would have done differently and set up a plan for next year.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Sunday, March 4, 2012
ICE in the rear view mirror
So it has been a little bit since I last posted. It has been a little crazy in my personal life and then there was the prep I had to do for the ICE technology conference.It has been pretty exciting but draining.
I planned to do a great job at the ICE conference for my presentation on "Flipping Classes Using Videos and Wikis". Here is a link to the PowerPoint that I used. I was all set and even did a run through in the room I was presenting in before my session. Everything looked great and I had about 90 people listening to me. The first part went fine and then I opened a link and then nothing happened. So I had to continually try to pivot from showing wiki that I could not show and going over PowerPoint slides that did not have the visuals to go along with them. Just about everybody stayed for the full session and I still think that they got 3-4 good ideas from the presentation so I guess that it was OK. But it could have been so much better. Oh well live and learn and I should try to remember next time to prepare for an internet cataclysm by taking bunches of screen shots to at least show the info to the audience.
Update - Video count is now up to over 5000. Averaging close to 1000 hits a month now and picking up speed. I have fallen behind a couple of times on videos and had to have the kids do something else that night. A lot of it had to do with technological issues that meant that it took longer than expected to record.
I planned to do a great job at the ICE conference for my presentation on "Flipping Classes Using Videos and Wikis". Here is a link to the PowerPoint that I used. I was all set and even did a run through in the room I was presenting in before my session. Everything looked great and I had about 90 people listening to me. The first part went fine and then I opened a link and then nothing happened. So I had to continually try to pivot from showing wiki that I could not show and going over PowerPoint slides that did not have the visuals to go along with them. Just about everybody stayed for the full session and I still think that they got 3-4 good ideas from the presentation so I guess that it was OK. But it could have been so much better. Oh well live and learn and I should try to remember next time to prepare for an internet cataclysm by taking bunches of screen shots to at least show the info to the audience.
Update - Video count is now up to over 5000. Averaging close to 1000 hits a month now and picking up speed. I have fallen behind a couple of times on videos and had to have the kids do something else that night. A lot of it had to do with technological issues that meant that it took longer than expected to record.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
4000+
I am up to 87 videos on my YouTube account. And right now I am at 4371 views. I have been crazy busy with family stuff but still have found time to record all of my math lessons and a few history ones too. It has been a lot easier to track who is watching the videos with the quizzes I am giving at the start of each class. The feedback has been good overall and when I was not able to go to work today due to water backing up in my basement, I had the students watch the video from the previous night. That way the substitute was able to review with them by just hitting a key on the computer.
In history class the students ask me frequently when they can work on the wiki page. For both the 6th and 7th Graders we have been going to the computer lab once a week. Now that they have a handle on how to do it they are getting better and faster. I did have to remind the students about what constitutes an appropriate source to use when we were on the unit on Islam. For the flags, one came up with a crescent and a swastika. So we had a discussion about what is OK to use and what is not.
I had a similar discussion with the students from my Non-Western Culture class and we got onto the topic of Wikipedia. Now I love Wikipedia and use it almost every day but I know the flaws and I wanted to make sure that my students did too. I showed them the Colbert Report episode when he talked about the made up word wikiality to talk about how Wikipedia can be changed if enough people agree to a change even if it is counter-factual. Then I made the mistake of mentioning that a few years ago students had gone onto our school's Wikipedia page and altered it to say that they were notable alumni who had great made up careers at the age of 17. And of course within hours a couple of my students figured out how to add all of their names to the school's page and recognize them all as Nobel Prize winners. I chuckled inside but got them to change it before anyone saw. I also had got to remind them that as moderator of the site I can see everything that they do on it. They were kind of bummed when I told them that I knew about the messages they were sending each other through the wikispaces site. I enjoy teaching them but they can be a handful.
In history class the students ask me frequently when they can work on the wiki page. For both the 6th and 7th Graders we have been going to the computer lab once a week. Now that they have a handle on how to do it they are getting better and faster. I did have to remind the students about what constitutes an appropriate source to use when we were on the unit on Islam. For the flags, one came up with a crescent and a swastika. So we had a discussion about what is OK to use and what is not.
I had a similar discussion with the students from my Non-Western Culture class and we got onto the topic of Wikipedia. Now I love Wikipedia and use it almost every day but I know the flaws and I wanted to make sure that my students did too. I showed them the Colbert Report episode when he talked about the made up word wikiality to talk about how Wikipedia can be changed if enough people agree to a change even if it is counter-factual. Then I made the mistake of mentioning that a few years ago students had gone onto our school's Wikipedia page and altered it to say that they were notable alumni who had great made up careers at the age of 17. And of course within hours a couple of my students figured out how to add all of their names to the school's page and recognize them all as Nobel Prize winners. I chuckled inside but got them to change it before anyone saw. I also had got to remind them that as moderator of the site I can see everything that they do on it. They were kind of bummed when I told them that I knew about the messages they were sending each other through the wikispaces site. I enjoy teaching them but they can be a handful.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Techno-Tragedy
I love the new school and the room that I work in. I there are only a couple of periods a week that I need to be out of it. So when I sat down and started to record my math lessons for the day for the students to watch on Tuesday I had a plan. Unfortunately it got derailed when my microphone did not work. I tried it on a couple of different computers but now it is in the garbage. So I did not record the lesson ahead of time for the first time this year. Oh well I think that the students were fine. We went over 3 lessons on Tuesday anyhow because it they were all about the basic definitions of geometry (rays, lines, angles, and triangles). It was pretty easy and we skipped over the one lesson that I do not like in the book on constructing angle and segment bisectors. I was kind of disappointed I had a great picture of Samuel Jackson to talk about when we went over planes. It was from "Snakes on a Plane" so I was pretty sure the kids would find it funny. I got a new set of headphones so I recorded today.
The Sixth Graders started on the wiki process on Tuesday and worked on it today as well. After giving the 7th Graders total freedom to create something on Japan, I realized that the students needed a little more guidance. Within the project set up, each has a page where they can put stuff. They needed to find material on the four chapters that we are studying about the successors to the Roman Empire (Germans, Franks, Irish and Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings). They seemed pretty into it. I did have limit the amount of "Deadliest Warrior" video time in the computer lab. It was fine providing it was on topic but once they started roaming and looking at other episodes I re-focused their attention on the topic. Some of the students had set up the pages in the wrong section and I was able to easily change them to the right place by cutting and pasting. They were all into the project but some got it quicker than others as expected. Good start and a good way of reviewing some material that I have always found kind of boring. We are probably going to go back again tomorrow and I will likely take the 7th Graders to so they can work on their Japan pages. Two of my kids have been adding stuff in their spare time for fun. Now that is buy in from the students.
The Sixth Graders started on the wiki process on Tuesday and worked on it today as well. After giving the 7th Graders total freedom to create something on Japan, I realized that the students needed a little more guidance. Within the project set up, each has a page where they can put stuff. They needed to find material on the four chapters that we are studying about the successors to the Roman Empire (Germans, Franks, Irish and Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings). They seemed pretty into it. I did have limit the amount of "Deadliest Warrior" video time in the computer lab. It was fine providing it was on topic but once they started roaming and looking at other episodes I re-focused their attention on the topic. Some of the students had set up the pages in the wrong section and I was able to easily change them to the right place by cutting and pasting. They were all into the project but some got it quicker than others as expected. Good start and a good way of reviewing some material that I have always found kind of boring. We are probably going to go back again tomorrow and I will likely take the 7th Graders to so they can work on their Japan pages. Two of my kids have been adding stuff in their spare time for fun. Now that is buy in from the students.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Halfway Home and All Hail the Power of the Wiki
So the semester is over and I am currently working on grade reports. I started working with the students on the wiki pages in my Non-Western Culture (7th Grade). We are working on Japan and we went as a class down to the new computer lab to start talking about the wiki. I set up accounts for each of the students and it really was pretty easy once I added the word griffin at the end of their first name and the initial of their last name (like: joesgriffin). I had divided the students into project and showed them how to set up the wiki. I showed them how to add videos, links, and pictures and to edit the text. After going through it a couple of times I let them just start to play. They leaped right in and immediately got started. The started grabbing things from all over the place. I had divided the students into groups that I knew would work well together, but showed them how they need to save their work so they do not over write each others work. One group decided to focus on sushi, another group on WW2, another group on the tsunami, and another one on ninjas. Some of the students just started putting additional random stuff they liked. It was a beautiful, amorphous mess. We only had about 10 minutes of them finding stuff and they did not want to leave when the bell rang.
The next day they came in and wanted to go back down to use the computers again. We could not use them but then something unexpected happened. I have two students who want to use their computer all of the time in class. Now that we have a better wireless system they are on them in class adding stuff to some of the lectures that I give whch is great. One of these students is very much a self starter who I really have to make sure to challenge, the other student is smart but hard to motivate. So both of them came in and said that they had spent some of the rest of the day adding links to the wiki so they could share them with the other students. It felt awesome seeing how excited they were and once I went on to see what they added it was great to see the results. They needed to tweak things a little bit and I am going to have to suggest to them that they organize the page a little more clearly so it is easier to follow but it was great to have such a buy in from the students.
This coming week I am going to try to set up the wiki for the 6th graders. I am once again going to not provide a lot of structure partially so they can play a little and get to know the system. So they will be focusing on the groups that came after the Roman Empire including the Franks, Germans, Vikings, Irish and Anglo-Saxons. We will have read the chapters from the book but this way they will hopefully be able to explore in a way that they are interested in and enthusiastic about.
In math, if I look at the progress of the students I am happy. The average grade for the second quarter was 85%. I think that that is the highest average I have had overall. I did stuff differently but my sense is that this has been a really good quarter. I am going to talk the students on Tuesday about what if any changes they think should be made to the class.
The next day they came in and wanted to go back down to use the computers again. We could not use them but then something unexpected happened. I have two students who want to use their computer all of the time in class. Now that we have a better wireless system they are on them in class adding stuff to some of the lectures that I give whch is great. One of these students is very much a self starter who I really have to make sure to challenge, the other student is smart but hard to motivate. So both of them came in and said that they had spent some of the rest of the day adding links to the wiki so they could share them with the other students. It felt awesome seeing how excited they were and once I went on to see what they added it was great to see the results. They needed to tweak things a little bit and I am going to have to suggest to them that they organize the page a little more clearly so it is easier to follow but it was great to have such a buy in from the students.
This coming week I am going to try to set up the wiki for the 6th graders. I am once again going to not provide a lot of structure partially so they can play a little and get to know the system. So they will be focusing on the groups that came after the Roman Empire including the Franks, Germans, Vikings, Irish and Anglo-Saxons. We will have read the chapters from the book but this way they will hopefully be able to explore in a way that they are interested in and enthusiastic about.
In math, if I look at the progress of the students I am happy. The average grade for the second quarter was 85%. I think that that is the highest average I have had overall. I did stuff differently but my sense is that this has been a really good quarter. I am going to talk the students on Tuesday about what if any changes they think should be made to the class.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Grading myself
Thankfully at the school I am at we do not put a whole lot of focus on standardized testing. In math, we go through the book about a chapter every 2 1/2 weeks, and the students take a test and maybe a couple of quizzes. But I do not really know how things are going compared to other students across the country. I am looking forward to seeing how the students do on the Terra Nova tests that they will take but until then I have to go on what the students have done in past years Clearly I have changed the way I teach and when the students took their semester math final focusing on the first six chapters of the book I was a little nervous on how they the students would do. Well they took their final and they significantly improved over last year. I do not have the time right now to do a statistical analysis of the data but I am guessing that the average went up by about 10 points. It was exciting to see the progress and that the concepts have stuck enough with the students. We did a brief review the past three days in class but that was all and I did that the previous year as well. I am just hoping that the gains are as dramatic on the Terra Nova tests they will take in spring. That way maybe I can argue that other teachers might need to give this method of instruction a look.
Monday, January 9, 2012
TIme for the Students to Step Up
Big week planned. In math, this is the week students will take their semester final. And in my World History (6th) and Non-Western Culture (7th) classes the students will be able to start adding to the wiki pages.
In math class, I gave each students a copy of the tests that they have taken so far this year. So they have a reminder of the stuff that they did not understand completely. I then have gone over some of the more difficult problems. I sent a long e-mail to parents recommending how their children should prepare and have reminded both parents and students that the videos are there if they have any questions.
In the two history classes, I figured out the way of adding permission for the students to be able to add to some of the pages without having to have their e-mails. It was really pretty easy to do it trough the bulk user e-mail feature on the wikispaces site. I was able to use this because I have a K-12 education site. That was pretty easy to get since all I had to do was e-mail the good people at wikispaces. It should be an interesting experience this week when I start to introduce to them how they can easily add stuff to the pages. I am going to start on this on Tuesday and have not decided yet whether to set clear parameters or to let the students just find stuff that interests them and that they think might interest others. I am torn between these two feelings. the 20th C. teacher is worried but the 21st C. teacher in me thinks the possibilities are worth the risk.
In math class, I gave each students a copy of the tests that they have taken so far this year. So they have a reminder of the stuff that they did not understand completely. I then have gone over some of the more difficult problems. I sent a long e-mail to parents recommending how their children should prepare and have reminded both parents and students that the videos are there if they have any questions.
In the two history classes, I figured out the way of adding permission for the students to be able to add to some of the pages without having to have their e-mails. It was really pretty easy to do it trough the bulk user e-mail feature on the wikispaces site. I was able to use this because I have a K-12 education site. That was pretty easy to get since all I had to do was e-mail the good people at wikispaces. It should be an interesting experience this week when I start to introduce to them how they can easily add stuff to the pages. I am going to start on this on Tuesday and have not decided yet whether to set clear parameters or to let the students just find stuff that interests them and that they think might interest others. I am torn between these two feelings. the 20th C. teacher is worried but the 21st C. teacher in me thinks the possibilities are worth the risk.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
3000 views and counting
Either yesterday or today my YouTube channel passed 3,000 views. I created my last video for the first semester and there is now officially a video for each of the sections for the first 6 chapters in the book. Now that I have figured out more bells and whistles like the calculator function I think it is going to go better for the rest of the year. Few things are more annoying I am guessing than watching your teacher do long division. It might be a good review but if you know how to do it then what a waste of time. This also should cut down on the time for each video that involves calculations.
I have started to add more images and am looking into adding other things the videos. Now I feel like the videos that I did at the beginning of the year are pretty boring and lame. I still looked at the video counter every night and saw that the videos were not being viewed by every student each night. So once I added the images I came up with a new idea of how to get the students to watch the videos more regularly. Every day after a video I have started to give them a 1 or 2 question multiple choice quiz. It is something simple and visual like what color was the Muppet who was the waiter (it was Grover and he is blue) or what was the Lego set that I mentioned (the Death Star). The answers are really easy and obvious and sometimes in the videos I even mention that you will want to remember this for tomorrow. The first day I did this I had not told the students and I was able to sense a shift in the class. They realized that I did have a way of making sure they at least looked at the video. So I am trying to find interesting and memorable images for the students to see for each video.
Now that I have one semester under my belt I feel like I am going to be able to really work at this and make the process even better for all involved.
I have started to add more images and am looking into adding other things the videos. Now I feel like the videos that I did at the beginning of the year are pretty boring and lame. I still looked at the video counter every night and saw that the videos were not being viewed by every student each night. So once I added the images I came up with a new idea of how to get the students to watch the videos more regularly. Every day after a video I have started to give them a 1 or 2 question multiple choice quiz. It is something simple and visual like what color was the Muppet who was the waiter (it was Grover and he is blue) or what was the Lego set that I mentioned (the Death Star). The answers are really easy and obvious and sometimes in the videos I even mention that you will want to remember this for tomorrow. The first day I did this I had not told the students and I was able to sense a shift in the class. They realized that I did have a way of making sure they at least looked at the video. So I am trying to find interesting and memorable images for the students to see for each video.
Now that I have one semester under my belt I feel like I am going to be able to really work at this and make the process even better for all involved.
Monday, January 2, 2012
The Downside of YouTube
I was looking up videos today to explain an important battle that the Romans fought against the Gauls and had trouble finding something appropriate. There are videos that are appropriate but I can't use them. The problem is the suggested videos that come up on the side of the YouTube video if you go to that instead of using the embedded version on the site. I was surprised to find what looked like inappropriate sexual content. I can almost imagine the discussions I would be having with my supervisor if I had not caught it. Unfortunately this is one of those areas that is hard deal with. I want to have the kids be able to look up and see all the great stuff out there but worry about the muck that will get through. I looked up videos on TeacherTube but there were a lot fewer options. I will have to work to figure out what the balance is on this.
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