There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t discover a useful/exciting website or tool. However, occasionally I come across something that gets me so excited and has the potential to become a major part of all of my teaching areas and personal life.
Today that tool is Posterous and its as simple as 3 steps……
“Wow that’s awesome” …..is exactly what I said and immediately fired up my email client and sent a 5mb video file to the post@posterous.comemail address. Within minutes I had received a return email with a link to a unique website that now contained my embedded video. It was so easy and incredible that I started to add and experiment with more and more file types which is handled perfect.
Still don’t believe how easy it is to use? Well….here’s some proof.
Today I decided to test it out within my Computer Graphics class as simply an easy way to create a digital portfolio online. I’m also planning on having my Year 7 Physical Education class, who are busy learning complex gymnastics techniques, film a series of the key skills, label and then send them via email to posterous. If this was done week by week, students could witness the development of their physical skills across different sports. What an incredible resource this would prove to be at the end of a semester or unit of work….
So how do you think you could use it in your classroom?
Now I must admit I’ve been a little slow on the uptake around exploring some of the nifty comic book creation tools online, but I’ve finally done it and thankfully I did. These tools are simply excellent and allow simple and highly effective creation of comic strips in a snap.
After familiarising myself with the ins and outs of a few of the tools I decided I would use them to make an alternative assignment criteria sheet for my senior outdoor education class. As some of you may have experienced these sheets can be often overlooked by the students. So why not whip up your instructions in comic book form?. The kids certainly read it before launching into the assignment which is indeed a positive. You can download the worksheet I used yesterday. PAGE 1PAGE 2
The next idea I had was to use comics as a way to do sports technique analysis within my PE classes. In a variety of my subjects we have a theoretical coaching component that requires students to analyse their own techniques, looking for room for improvement based on a number of biomechanical principles. The very nature of comics lends themselves really well to an analysis activity, as each frame can represent a key aspect of the technique and include important annotations. (See the example below) Some of the other ideas Ive had include
As an alternative to a report on an extra curriculular activity or as a unique addition to a school newsletter.
Character development within a novel
Movie quote analysis for film studies?
For any activity that has a process, ie Home Economics/Science
….the potential uses are endless…
So if you havn’t considered comic book creation within your subject area, I strongly urge you to check out the following comic book creation tools and include it in your next class.
www.comiclife.com – This is the premier comic creation tool, although the ownly downside is it isnt free but can be purchased very cheap (just bought a 50 seat license). However it comes with a free 30 day full working trial that may suit your intended use.
www.toondoo.com – A very good online alternative to comic life
In an earlier post I mentioned a website that allowed you to to easily and quickly create multiple choice quizzes and then complete them on mobile devices such as cell phones. The website is super simple to use and takes you through step by step to create your quiz. On completion you get a series of ways in which you can download and install the quiz on your cell phone.
Once the test has been installed you will be able to complete it from your phone and have the results sent to quiz creator. Heres how it all works below.
The team over at www.mobilestudy.org have listened to some of my comments and have introduced a couple of changes that have really improved the service they offer. The first is the fact that you can now create multiple choice questions that have more than a couple of words for the answer, meaning that you can now cater for a much larger variety of questions. The second is the removal of the automatic randomize feature during test creation, that means you can now safely include questions that have all of the above or similar formats for the answers. Add to this, the improvements in the formatting and colour schemes and you have a high quality test that makes it very easy to study anywhere. Thanks mobilestudy, my students are really enjoying this new version of your service by both creating and completing tests.
It really does make it possible to study on the go…
Talk about a slap back to reality…..After an amazing two weeks of adventure throughout Thailand in the school holidays I was back in a flash and I am now teaching my first ever Maths subject. Now given I am not maths trained I have been worried about my lack of preparation. Anyway the fact I’m in a small school basically means that if there is a staff shortfall, you may be asked to teach outside of your area of expertise.
So I find myself teaching a year 9 (really poor numeracy skills) unit called ‘Space and Measurement’ that in the past have been taught completely out of a text book. Today we started with the basics by having students convert between different units of length measurement. So here is my first ever maths lesson with help from the magic of Google and Google Earth.
Introduced the Length unit and then had the students complete a worksheet where they practiced the skills of converting lengths between units (mm, cm, m, km)
We then made a bookmark that contained the rules for completing conversions, which can be summarised in a diagram. This was then laminated and will be used throughout the semester.
I then introduced the students to Google and its ability to calculate answers. The students then completed this worksheet that had the students complete conversions by hand and then use Google to check the accuracy of their answers.
The next step was to load Google Earth and complete this worksheet which had the students measuring real world landmarks throughout the world and converting this information back into more useful units of measurement. Some of the things they had to measure included, the size of their houses, the distance between Melbourne and Fiji and the length of a tennis court. All of which were completed with incredible accuracy within Google Earth, something the kids found incredible and highly motivating.
So the next step is to have them measure the area and perimeter of objects and use this information to come to conclusions about things like whether or not the Melbourne Cricket Ground could fit in the same space as the towns local cricket ground etc etc. The possibilities are endless with Google Earth and mathematics and I’m certainly looking towards exploring these in more detail.
Anyway for those of you who are unsure of how to measure objects in Google Earth I created a tutorial for the students using Screen Steps (which I highly recommend you try for creating quick professional looking tutorials or better yet have your students use to create. Anyway feel free to download and use the tutorial here.
So at the end of the day I was quite happy with my first attempt at teaching maths and have started to develop some further ideas, such as a Voicethread designed to teach estimation skills. I plan to have students take a 1 metre ruler around the school and place it against of objects have them take pictures of this and uploading it to Voicethread. The kids will then log on and use the 1 metre ruler in the variety of pictures to help them estimate the size of the objects the ruler is placed against.
Look forward to sharing with you my maths adventures in the future, and would love if you to hear any ideas you may have around using ICT in a mathematics class.
One thing I’ve certainly heard thrown around the staff room is how much teachers hate correcting traditional tests and exams. I would fall into this category as well at times and would much prefer to complete rich assessment tasks that are an absolute pleasure to assess, but we are obligated at times to teach students in the traditional ways so that they are prepared for their final assessments and the format they will be conducted within.
Now given my dislike towards correcting them, I’ve been investigating a heap of different online test creation tools that provide instant feedback to the students and the teachers about what they do and don’t understand. Here’s the list of tools Ive compiled, with help to some of the people within my Twitter network. If your looking for a way to give instant feedback and cut through the pile of correction, why not set an online test? Or better still have your students create their own to give to others?
If you are looking for a more professional quiz creation tool then you cant go past Quiz Creator by sameshow. I purchased a copy last year and have been amazed at the types of questions you can create and the analysis it provides on the people who take the tests. You can find a couple of examples of tests Ive created using it recently here and here
Make A Quizallows users to create their own customised quizzes on the internet. Once created, These quizzes can then be sent to friends and family for them to take!
And a few others I havent had a chance to utilise as yet.
Its exam time at the moment and my students are busy studying up and asking all sorts of questions like, what format is the exam, how many pages is it etc. So with this in mind I decided torun an online revision session for my VCE Physical Education class using Tiny Chat.
Tiny chat has recently undergone a makeover and is now able to run audio, video and screen sharing all from within the chat window which requires no sign up. Simply click the button and it generates a room for you and then gives you options on how you want to invite others. The easiest way to invite people is by sharing the unique URL with your intended audience. In my case I used SMS Express to send an text message to my students containing the URL of the meeting and the time at which I would be available for questions.
The time soon arrived and to my suprise all of the members of my class were in the room. This gave us a great opportunity to review some of the key content and discuss any questions relating to the format of the exam. The great thing is the students didn’t need to have a webcam or microphone to participate as they can simply respond via text, which was more than fine and probably worked better than having them all using webcams.
Before long we had notched up over an hour of question time and reviewed a large amount of key content that was to be assessed on the exam the next day, which to me was a brilliant outcome. So do I think that this revision session will improve the students exam grades? ……..Without a doubt. Tinychat rocks, check it out.
Now for the VCE Outdoor and Environmental Studies revision session on Wednesday night.
So I’ve been looking for a chance to use Etherpad for quite some time now and last week proved to be the perfect opportunity. I had just organised a guestspeaker to appear via Skype in my senior Outdoor Education so we needed to come up with a series of questions to ask him for the following week. So I created an Etherpad and sent it to all of my students via the simple URL it gives you. The best thing is you don’t need to sign up in order to start contributing to the ‘pad’.
Anyway my students received the URL and got to work creating a series of questions that they we could then ask during the interview. The ability to see each others work update in real time meant that there was no double up in the questions. It also seemed as though they motivated each other to contribute, with comments such as ‘how many have you created’ flowing around the room. Within minutes my class had created a high quality document that they could then print and use in their preparation for the interview. Click to see Our Pad.
So why is this better than a bit of poster paper and a class brainstorm activity?
Well digital text is moveable, editable, mashable something a poor old poster would struggle to do. The winner is in the ability to collaborate with people from the other side of the world as if they were in the same room. We tested this out when our guest stopped in and watched the questions he was about to be asked, be created. This proved to be a major motivator in the brainstorming process as the students were writing and rewriting their questions to ensure they would be well received by Eric.
An amazing free web2.0 tool with incredible power for collaboration and too top it all off…. its so easy.
In year 7 Physical Education we are learning about the different body systems that allow us to complete physical activity. This week we started looking at the role the circulatory system has in the body with a focus on heart rate and what happens during exercise to allow us too participate. To demonstrate this I decided to complete an activity in a Google docs spreadsheet that would graph the change in heart rate over a period of time. This is what we did:
The kids simply loved it and with the data being displayed visually, we were able to enter a much deep conversation about how heart rate is effected by physical activity. For a step by step run down of how I set it up you can check below.
1 - Created a Google doc spreadsheet that had all students in the class and 5 columns for them to enter in they heart rates at 5 different intervals. 2 - Created a graph on a separate sheet that would pull down all of the data from the 5 columns and display it as a line graph. 3- Then sent this document to all of the students via their Gmail accounts. 4 – Each student logged in on a computer and opened the spreadsheet and found their names. 5- We started by taking a resting heart rate using the radial/carotoid pulse and entered this into the ‘pulse 1′ column. 6 - We then moved outside and completed a harvard step test for 3mins with the whole class working at the same intensity and with the same timing of up and down steps. 7 - We then took our pulse and entered this into the ‘pulse 2′ column. The students then directed their attention to the Interactive Whiteboard which was displaying the graph and watched as it updated in real time 8- Finally we went on to complete 3 more heart rate readings at different stages such as 1 minute, 3 minute and 5minutes after the harvard step test and entered these into the appropriate columns.
Today during my senior Physical Education class my students completed a test under exam conditions. The test was on the topic of ‘Biomechanics’ and to the naked eye it looked very much like one of the traditional tests I sat while I was at school. However look a little deeper and this exam was a little different; Here’s why…
In the days preceding the test, I scheduled SMS messages to be delivered to the students phones that contained questions requiring them to employ a series of higher order thinking skills, such as evaluation and synthesis. It was clear that the ability to reflect on the learning process of a period of days was a real advantage to the questions the final product.
The next difference was that some of the questions required the students to seek outside help. In the example below students had to SMS a friend who would then choose a random sport and send this back. The students then used this sport as the basis for their responses. In my opinion this question is more aligned with the real world, in that the students had to be able to apply their knowledge and understanding into a situation that was determined by a friend as opposed to a concrete question on a piece of paper.
3. The final difference was in that I encouraged the students to bring in their Mp3 players that had been pre-recorded with a series of student created podcasts of all the lower order elements of blooms taxonomy such as definitions and discussions. They then used these throughout the test as prompts to assist them in responding to the higher order questions.
Overall a very successful approach that has certainly proved to me that the powers of reflection & collaboration in the learning process can have a dramatic effect on the quality of the work presented. Well done students.
Friday the 15th May saw the annual Innovation Showcase at the Crown Palladium in Melbourne. It was an absolutely excellent event that clearly followed the theme of linking educators to share innovation. The first session I attended was ”Flat Classroom Walls” by Anne Mirtschin, which can be summed up as simply brilliant. Her ability to connect her students with others from all around the world is nothing but inspirational.
I also was fortunate enough to be asked to present a session in the afternoon on the use of Mobile Phones and SMS in the classroom which seemed to be well received by both the online and face to face audiences. You can find a copy of the presentation here; http://mrrobbo.wordpress.com/innovation-showcase/
After a fantastic day connecting with lots of like minded professionals we moved into the closing keynotes with one in particular raising a few very interesting points that will require some further thinking. So here’s what I was left with after Mark Pesce’s Closing Keynote;
Do you fill a bucket or light a flame, when it comes to teaching your students? This is a very interesting way to think about the way in which we go about educating our students. What’s your take?
The second point was demonstrated using my favourite cartoon South Park. The video proves that no matter what rules we enforce, or systems we put in place to prevent students utilising ‘banned’ tools during school time, the fact of the matter is they will continue to do so. As a teacher this reinforces the need to consider exactly how the tools that the student’s embrace, could be introduced into the classroom to improve learning and engagement. If more of this thinking was to occur in our classrooms we might start to see a few more candles being lit along the way.
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