Thoughts on Edubloggers

I was quite inspired by Eric Langhorst's Speaking of History blog. In particular, I was drawn to his post on creating screencasts and videos for his students while away.

At the time of the post, he had recently returned from the Mount Vernon Missouri Teachers' Workshop, where he had spent the weekend learning about George Washington and Mount Vernon with fellow teachers. His enthusiasm for the trip was obvious: he took numerous gorgeous photos and was driven to create a six-minute screencast for his students explaining a particular aspect of what he had learned at the workshop.

He arranged a few of the photos he took showcasing the "rustication" on George Washington's house and created a voiceover that taken together present a thorough lesson on this method of building that was used in Washington's time. While still at the workshop, he had his sub show the screencast to his class. Thus, he managed to teach his class while away; not only this, he managed to allow his students a taste of the travel experience that he was able to enjoy.

More importantly, however, I believe that by revealing to his students his own affinity for being a lifelong learner of history, he modeled intellectual curiosity in a powerful and inspiring way. Furthermore, his screencast allowed students a glimpse at "doing history." Students are used to reading history textbooks which present historical events in a way that takes for granted the methods historians use to acquire such knowledge. In fact, the act of broadening our understanding of history is an inquiry-based, piece-by-piece process. By focusing the screencast on a rather limited subject: the material used to construct the house, and presenting it in the form of an inquiry/discovery, he showed his students the method used by historians to learn about the past.

I have not yet received a response from Eric. After using screencasting last week for the webinar project, however, I was excited to see an application of screencasting in a middle school classroom. I'd be curious to know if he has used screencasting since this September blog post.

Using Voice Thread in the Classroom

I was interested by the digital storytelling tool Voice Thread, presented by my classmates as their Tech Tools in Use project. For whatever reason, it took me some time to understand the purpose of such a tool. But, now that it has been a few weeks since the presentation, I find myself valuing the tool.

When I consider myself as a learner, I certainly learn best via conversation. In preparing for my own U-M classes, I generally read the assigned readings quite thoroughly, highlighting the sentences I consider to convey the main points. By the time I get to class, I have a vague idea of the purpose/main points of the readings. But, once I am able to discuss what I learned with my classmates, the act of a) considering the ideas more actively, b) putting my ideas into words (in order to convey them to classmates), and c) hearing myself and others speak the ideas helps me to retain them.  

Additionally, I notice that images stick in my brain quite reliably. Thus, when a teacher shows an image that captures my attention and simultaneously speaks the significance, I often have an easy time recalling what was said. My mental representation of the image helps me to recall what the teacher had been saying.

It seems Voice Thread is the perfect technological substitute for these two in-class activities I just discussed. Voice Thread can provide a virtual vocalized presentation of images that serve as attention-grabbing illustrations. And, similar to real-life conversations, ideas may stick in audio-oriented students’ brains, while the capability for student questions/comments allows for active engagement and participation.

Changing media of learning can often function as an attention-grabber for students who are becoming bored with the norm. In general, I feel that in-person discussion and in-person presentation/lecture are superior to a digital storytelling presentation. This is because in person, the presentation can and does change slightly to match the interests and personality of the particular class period. However, Voice Thread could serve as an excellent medium for work to be done either at home or during a sub day. While I certainly don’t think it should serve as a substitute for readings, I do think it could serve as an effective complement to ideas presented in readings.

Thoughts on Tom Ward's Presentation

I was thoroughly inspired by Tom Ward’s presentation on how he uses technology in his high school classroom. He showed the video he took of the JV point guard shooting a free throw; the video focused on the parabola the ball followed on its way from the player’s hands toward the basket. Tom explained how he used the video in class to ask the students to use math functions to figure out whether the ball eventually made it into the basket, based on the parabola function it followed. Later, he discussed how he has the students use their cell phones to complete Vine-style (short) video assignments to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of a concept. These assignments are completely open-ended and creative: it is up to the students how they want to demonstrate their knowledge. He justified the usefulness of such an assignment with a quote that he projected as part of his presentation; the quote was along the lines of, “Imagine the depth of understanding required when you can convey a concept in only six seconds.”

I love that these assignments demonstrate the connection between math and the real world, and that they require students to use the content taught to create something. I think it is so important that students grow up expecting that they will need to think outside the box, that the answers will not be given to them, and that they need to use whatever resources they can think of to find their way to “the answer.” In general, it seems the norm in schools is for all the answers to be given to students, either in the textbook, or in a teacher-given handout/outline, or in a teacher’s lecture/directions. While of course there is a time and place for the knowledgeable teacher to share his or her knowledge with the inexperienced students, there is also a time and a place for inexperienced students to gain “how-to,” problem-solving experience by trial and error. To me, it seems these Vine-style assignments ask students to do just this: produce a video that conveys this concept; the specifics of “how” is up to you.

I’d love to recreate this sort of project in my future history classroom. I really loved the idea that extreme conciseness demonstrates thorough understanding. I think in history there is certainly something to be said for longer, detailed stories. But, when it comes to history concepts the same “conciseness=understanding” rule can be applied. Thus, perhaps I could ask students to create Vine-style videos that convey history concepts such as change over time, comparison/contrast, contextualization, sourcing, and primary vs. secondary documents.