Rewind Me

This is just a bit of an update on something else I have been working on since ULearn12. As well as trying to make my units and/or lessons more student-centred, I have also instilled a rule that every time I teach, I must be filmed. This has three purposes:

1. As much as I hate seeing/hearing myself on film, it is great Professional Development for me.
2. The students who miss lessons can view the "teaching" aspect of the lesson.
3. Any student who finds my pace too fast can review the video and pause, rewind and replay me.

Professional Development

This has been fantastic! I talk too fast, I move around too much and some of my explanations are just far too wordy/complicated. I tell a great story with enthusiasm and my notes are pretty good too. Sometimes, I make a total mess of it and have to film myself during a non-contact lesson or lunchtime. I have hated seeing myself on film and cringed all too often. However, I think my teaching is getting better; even after 14 years of teaching, I am learning a lot. What I am most proud of is that I do not explain concepts for more than 8-9 minutes usually. Add a few minutes for giving instructions, this means I get to do some real teaching for the other 35+ minutes of a lesson!

Missed Lessons

My students are busy souls. Sports, field trips and internal assessments (among other things) have "robbed" my students of time in my classroom, working with their peers and being inspired by their wonderful teacher. However, every student who misses a lesson can still "catch up" on the moments their wonderful teacher spent explaining a concept or giving words of wisdom. I am filmed and it goes on the class blog. Now, I even put it on YouTube because I'm not so scared of being criticised any more...

Rewind Me

This was the original reason I did this, but its value has only recently been recognised by my students. I recently taught about the calculations which are needed to analyse a titration. It really is as complicated as it sounds, when first introduced to it!! The first effort was actually an unmitigated disaster, so I re-filmed it on my own, then asked a student to critique it, then posted it on YouTube. While many students worked out how to do the calculations after my first explanation and by doing some examples, a few were totally lost.

Consider this: The assessment for this task requires students to have very good titration techniques and the ability to analyse the data mathematically. These are both tough skills until you have some experience and/or lots of practice. Therefore, within my classroom, I have students working on refining their experimental technique because they can do the calculations just fine, while I have others who can do the experiment but cannot do the calculations at all.

This is what I observed: Students were crowded around laptops watching my films, pausing them, attempting an exercise (or that part of the experiment), then pressing "play" again. They would repeat this process until they felt confident. My virtual self was teaching a very differentiated lesson over and over, yet my corporeal self just circulated the room critiquing experimental technique and being supportive.

I have been asked to present something about the use of technology in the classroom at an upcoming PD Day in Term Two; I have decided to share this idea at that PD Day.