So far I've posted 3 lectures and the response so far has been positive. I've been using class time to run more labs and to do more problems. I really feel like students are happier, but I've noticed that my lower level students are still struggling. It will be hard to tell if this new method is working before the exam is given.
My exam is scheduled for next week and I will give a survey question to see how they are liking the videos.
The videos themselves are ok, but I believe that with practice I can make them better. Right now there is a huge time constraint with grading also needing to get done, but I think the summer will provide a lot more time to refine and fix rough areas such as how to use the tablet to show how to work problems.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Finished the First Lecture!!
I've finished the first lecture. Here was the process I used to record it and make it live:
1) Record audio and timing for each slide in Power point
2) Using Jing Pro play power point and record 5 min chunks of video
3) Using Quicktime edit video to fit timing scale
4) Merge video files into one
5) Transfer to Youtube (note: Youtube only allows 15min videos, so if you want to post a longer video then you'll need to follow instructions on the site to get approval)
This was a very long winded way of doing it but it was cheap for me (Jing is 14.95 and all the other software that I used I already had. I believe that Camtasia will allow you to do all of this in one program but I'm not ready to shell out the money for that. I thought I would try this a couple times and see how my students like it, then I might start getting more creative and purchase some better tools. I still haven't tried to use the tablet yet to show problems, but that will be my next challenge.
1) Record audio and timing for each slide in Power point
2) Using Jing Pro play power point and record 5 min chunks of video
3) Using Quicktime edit video to fit timing scale
4) Merge video files into one
5) Transfer to Youtube (note: Youtube only allows 15min videos, so if you want to post a longer video then you'll need to follow instructions on the site to get approval)
This was a very long winded way of doing it but it was cheap for me (Jing is 14.95 and all the other software that I used I already had. I believe that Camtasia will allow you to do all of this in one program but I'm not ready to shell out the money for that. I thought I would try this a couple times and see how my students like it, then I might start getting more creative and purchase some better tools. I still haven't tried to use the tablet yet to show problems, but that will be my next challenge.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Slow and Steady Pace
I've been a little overwhelmed with grading and planning that I've put my tech aspirations on the back burner for the past couple weeks. I'm looking forward to having time again to start using the advice and equipment that I've been given so far to start recording some learning activities for my students.
One thing that I also need to consider is how to improve assessments. With labs becoming more and more important in class, giving students quick written feedback on their work is a challenge. This is easily done verbally but the written analysis for me takes a lot of time, and is far from immediate. I would like to lessen the amount of quick check your work grading and focus more on the in depth written feedback so that students are getting both. I believe technology can help me here as well.
Tools that I'm aware of to help:
I've heard about using google forms and docs to help assess learning but I need to spend more time learning how to use this tool.
Another means of online assessment is a program called WebAssign which has various helpful resources for AP Chem and currently supports the book we are using in class. I would love a chance to demo this software with my AP Chem class this semester to see if it would give them the opportunity to get more immediate feedback as they are learning. It is also an expensive investment ($10.50 per student so with the ~61 that I have we're talking $630 per year) so I would need to explore to see if it is really worthwhile.
Is there anything else out there I should try?
One thing that I also need to consider is how to improve assessments. With labs becoming more and more important in class, giving students quick written feedback on their work is a challenge. This is easily done verbally but the written analysis for me takes a lot of time, and is far from immediate. I would like to lessen the amount of quick check your work grading and focus more on the in depth written feedback so that students are getting both. I believe technology can help me here as well.
Tools that I'm aware of to help:
I've heard about using google forms and docs to help assess learning but I need to spend more time learning how to use this tool.
Another means of online assessment is a program called WebAssign which has various helpful resources for AP Chem and currently supports the book we are using in class. I would love a chance to demo this software with my AP Chem class this semester to see if it would give them the opportunity to get more immediate feedback as they are learning. It is also an expensive investment ($10.50 per student so with the ~61 that I have we're talking $630 per year) so I would need to explore to see if it is really worthwhile.
Is there anything else out there I should try?
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Flip teaching day 2
The bigger tablet that I spoke about in the last blog still is not giving me the functionality that I had hoped. With a little bit of begging my husband agreed to let me use his motion computing tablet pc. It is a couple years old and still runs windows XP so there was an initial challenge to getting the correct software that will make my lectures run. Unfortunately this pc tablet doesn't have enough ram to record with so I need to record it on my mac. This means I would need to get software to do a screen share between the PC and my mac to make the video for each lecture.
Fortunately at Gunn we have awesome tech people who knew exactly what to do. There are two programs that I was introduced to that would allow me to do this without any out of pocket expense. The first was safari (just need to input the IP address into the web browser and it connects!), the other is VNC Chicken (you need to download it but it will give the same functionality allowing you to screen share).
The exciting thing about the tablet PC is that it is sooooooo easy to write on in comparison to the other tablets I've tried so far, and it looks great. The only draw back to this process is the delay that occurs on the mac where the screen share is being recorded. I haven't played enough with it yet to know if it is really going to be a problem, but I will write again if it is.
Oh and thank you to Mr. Foster from TechSmith for correcting me on Jing. It turns out that Jing is only $15/year so I misinterpreted what I read online. I think I will give it a go as $15 is affordable. :)
Fortunately at Gunn we have awesome tech people who knew exactly what to do. There are two programs that I was introduced to that would allow me to do this without any out of pocket expense. The first was safari (just need to input the IP address into the web browser and it connects!), the other is VNC Chicken (you need to download it but it will give the same functionality allowing you to screen share).
The exciting thing about the tablet PC is that it is sooooooo easy to write on in comparison to the other tablets I've tried so far, and it looks great. The only draw back to this process is the delay that occurs on the mac where the screen share is being recorded. I haven't played enough with it yet to know if it is really going to be a problem, but I will write again if it is.
Oh and thank you to Mr. Foster from TechSmith for correcting me on Jing. It turns out that Jing is only $15/year so I misinterpreted what I read online. I think I will give it a go as $15 is affordable. :)
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
My Flip Teaching Adventure
I made an end of semester resolution to work on making my AP Chemistry class more hands on. It is very hard to do this with so much material and so little time available. When the professional development day finally came I was able to attend a presentation about "Flip teaching" which sparked my interest and provided a possible solution.
The idea of "Flip teaching" is to allow the students first time exposure to the content (which most often is presented in the form of lecture) to happen at home with a fully produced video. This video should contain notes and model problems. This would then free up class time to synthesize the information (normally assigned as homework) in the form of in class problem sets and labs. This would give me more time for inquiry based assignments and will allow me to better differentiate my lessons for each individuals learning pace.
The trick right now seems to involve finding excellent screen capture video software as well as a tablet to create the produced lecture that I would hope the students would watch and enjoy. Thus I set out over break looking for a tablet to try. I started at Frys and purchased the vistablet penpad. This cheap ($40) tablet was light and flexible, but the size would not give me the precision to make my annotations legible. I then returned to Fry's to pick up the next level of drawing tablet which had a much larger working space. This allowed me to get started with some free trial video capturing software to see what I could do.
The free trial of jing gave me short files that I had trouble converting. Jing has a purchasable version that has conversion ability but you have to pay $15 a month to use it. I thought that was too expensive so I decided to search for something else. I then tried SnapZpro which could compress and convert the file into a readable form, but it doesn't have pause capability so if I am having trouble with an aspect of the presentation I would need to edit movie clips in a 2nd piece of software. Isn't there a single program that can record, pause, and edit? Do you know of something?
The idea of "Flip teaching" is to allow the students first time exposure to the content (which most often is presented in the form of lecture) to happen at home with a fully produced video. This video should contain notes and model problems. This would then free up class time to synthesize the information (normally assigned as homework) in the form of in class problem sets and labs. This would give me more time for inquiry based assignments and will allow me to better differentiate my lessons for each individuals learning pace.
The trick right now seems to involve finding excellent screen capture video software as well as a tablet to create the produced lecture that I would hope the students would watch and enjoy. Thus I set out over break looking for a tablet to try. I started at Frys and purchased the vistablet penpad. This cheap ($40) tablet was light and flexible, but the size would not give me the precision to make my annotations legible. I then returned to Fry's to pick up the next level of drawing tablet which had a much larger working space. This allowed me to get started with some free trial video capturing software to see what I could do.
The free trial of jing gave me short files that I had trouble converting. Jing has a purchasable version that has conversion ability but you have to pay $15 a month to use it. I thought that was too expensive so I decided to search for something else. I then tried SnapZpro which could compress and convert the file into a readable form, but it doesn't have pause capability so if I am having trouble with an aspect of the presentation I would need to edit movie clips in a 2nd piece of software. Isn't there a single program that can record, pause, and edit? Do you know of something?
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