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.