My last session on the day on Monday was just as exciting as my first one! I went to Podcasting Your Way to Measurable Results with Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams and these guys were great! Hilarious, fun, I would have loved to have been a student in their classes and they all teach high school Chemistry, which was not one of my favorite subjects. Bergmann and Sams teach at the school and often not only plan lessons together, but teach them together too--through their podcasts.
They started out by saying that the program they were presenting was something you could do over night-it took them three years to get to where they are now. I fully appreciated hearing this as I often forget that some things need to build and grow and mature over time and that you learn along the way and each things get better and (hopefully!) easier.
They got right to business and told us the programs and tools they use when creating their podcasts (making a joke that the participants only wanted this information-they were really funny!) They use (some programs are only mac or PC): Camtasia studio, Wacom Graphire, Wacom Bamboo, Samson CO3U Mic, Screenflow, Jing, and a Built in Mic.
And then they asked and answered three questions: Can teachers get more time?
Is mastery possible? Can differentiation happen? The answer to all was a resounding YES!
In year 1: Recording Live! They recorded their live lessons and put them on the internet.
They discovered:
They needed to Collaborate, share, and model together.
They found the students were taking ineffective notes, getting frustrated at home
and there were gaps in their learning.
They thought: We have to make our class time have value!
What do students think the most often when learning a new concept: I wish I could stop the teacher and re-hear it! Well, with podcasting they can. When students are struggling at home or in school to figure out a concept, what they really need is to have a teacher with them. Again, with podcasting they can!
Year 2: Pre-Vodcasting
One of the things they recommended was that if you are going to be doing podcasts/vodcasts, watch some so you get an understanding of what they are and how to set one up.
They decided in this year of their project that they were going to switch some things around; homework is now going to be to watchin the lesson - and in class let’s work on the problems! Which is where students seemed to need the most help. Switching the process of what goes on in the classroom.
They also decided that the podcasts were better with having both of them, because it was more like a conversation and it made it easier for the kids relate to.
Here's a re-creation of a chart they share with us. In one column was what their classes were like without the podcasting/vodcasting and in the next column was what it was like with it.
Without Vodcasting
Warm up activity, 5 mins
Go over previous night’s homework, 20 mins
Leccture new content, 30-45 mins
Guided practice, 20-35 mins
With Vodcasting
Warm-up, 5 mins
Q&A on podcast, 10 min
Guided practice, rest of the time!
They began to notice that they got to meet with every single one of their kids every day! They were also able to do more lab activities and engaging hands on activities, there were No D’s and and Fewer F’s and C’s in their classes. And they realized that on tests students who were watching the podcasts with lower math scores did just as well as the kids who weren’t watching the podcasts with higher math scores.
They ended up having positive student and parent feedback; parents were coming back saying thank you and that they were learning by watching the podcasts too!
Year 3: Mastery Learning
In this year, they got a foreign exchange student halfway through the year, and they were worried if she would be able to pass the class having missed a semester. She watched the podcasts and caught up!
By this point, they had realized that the vodcasts end up being sort-of self paced, that students were becoming independent learners, the gaps in understanding were diminishing, and those having trouble had no place to hide.
While listening to this, I realized that if we were to do this at my school, we could have students take test using a software program called ExamView and as teachers we could look at the reports to find out concepts where students are struggling and the students could then go back and watch the podcast on those areas. So if "Jimmy" hadn't mastered the concepts on Science 3.4, he could go back and watch the podcast where the teacher had covered concept 3.4. Instant review tool!
The students prefer mastery model Bergmann and Sams implemented in year 3, 2:1.
They also showed us an example of a Language Arts teacher who would pull up an essay astudent wrote, and then she would screen capture and record the edits and corrections of the essay so that student could be "walked" through those steps. She does this with every student's paper and she puts it on their webpages and then later the class heads down to the lab and with headphones, they all have her voice and explanations of the edits and corrections right there in front of them!
She said it doesn’t’ take her any more time than when she was grading papers before. She's calls it: “It's Hot Off the Press”
Another great reason to do this: When there’s a sub, you can still teach your kids while you’re gone, because you've already recorded the lesson!
Showing posts with label podcasting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label podcasting. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
NECC Day 2 - Monday, First session
Here's my wrap up of my first session at NECC from Monday.
I started out with a great session on Enabling Reading with 21st Century Skills with John Long and Debbie Svec. They had 6 ways to use technology through Digital Reading Portfolios, Graphic Organizers, Ipod/iread, Gaming Software, Podcasting, and Webchats. Not only was he a dynamic speaker, the examples he showed us of students using the technology spoke for itself.
With Digital Reading portfolios, Long captures students reading samples throughout the year, which he can store for authentic assessment. Some of the advantages he found by doing this was: Students try harder because they hear themselves and want to sound better. He said one student went home and practiced and came back saying he was determined to sound better than he did the day before; Parents like it because they can hear student improvement, If using ipod, you can put the recording straight into itunes and parents can hear from home, or you can burn a CD at the end of the year.
With graphic organizers, Long used Inspiration and Kidspiration in the normal ways of brainstorming and organizing thoughts, but he also used it for storyboarding for digital storytelling projects. I thought this was another inventive way to use this software and I would like to try it with any projects we do in Comic Life next year.
Svec's ipod and iread program is what interested me the most. In this program, students would check out the text version of a book and an ipod with the audio verison to read along with the text to enhance fluency. They were able to do this project through an initial grant and bought something like 200 ipod nanos. The kids only use it at home and check the ipods out when they leave school and back in, in the morning and the ipods charge during the day. In the length of time they have been doing this project only 1 pod was ever lost and the parent quickly replaced it. That's pretty good numbers! They buy the audio book versions off of itunes. One teacher asked, "What if the students don't pay attention to the audio" and Long explained that that may occur at first, but the students quickly use both as they find it better to understand the both the text and the audio.
With Gaming, Svec uses Cranium Core, an online program that has read alouds and games, and then they add discuss and defend groups, which allows the students to build their reading, writing and listening skills, adds an engagement factor, and resources to intervention strategy. One of the main aspects this program works with is main idea and author’s purpose. The presenters said that the students would actually begin arguing in class about author’s purpose with each other because they were so into it. It really allowed the students to have social interaction with each other and let them talk about the issues in the book. The price really can't be beat either; $365 a year for the entire school and it sounds like any book you read, you can use this program with it. I really want to check out this website and this program!
Then Long talked about podcasting. He's got three student teams that he has put together: 1) MOD Squad (Multimedia on Demand), which does digital storytelling and guides, 2) Tech Ambassadors, and 3) Team TLC. With the training he has done at their school, there are over 200 teacher websites, with over 900 podcasts from 2 years, and they get an average of 150,000 hits a week! Absolutely amazing stuff! One of the teachers he works with does a podcast a week, and throught their podcasting (this nearly broke my heart) a parent who is serving in Iraq and was able to hear his daughter and stay in contact with her. They showed three examples of student podcasting: !) Student who did a book review, but told the parts of the book that held the conflict, the resolution, etc. 2)Students did a promotional commercials for books. This example was Farenheit 451-imagine a world without books? And from there they created a story to get kids to read the book. 3) Students did Q&A sessions. One student acted as host, and another student who read the book and answers the questions. The student used anecdotes when answering and talked about how his life experiences are similar to those of the main character.
The last thing we looked at were web chats. One of the groups Svec worked with was a group she created called the GStar Girls, who asked one day how they could talk with the author of the book they had finished reading. By email, the teacher contacted the author and the girls got to use ichat to ask author questions. This could also probably be done with Skype. I've heard of a lot of people, including Oprah Winfrey who are using Skype to communicate.
Great session with lots of great ideas!
I started out with a great session on Enabling Reading with 21st Century Skills with John Long and Debbie Svec. They had 6 ways to use technology through Digital Reading Portfolios, Graphic Organizers, Ipod/iread, Gaming Software, Podcasting, and Webchats. Not only was he a dynamic speaker, the examples he showed us of students using the technology spoke for itself.
With Digital Reading portfolios, Long captures students reading samples throughout the year, which he can store for authentic assessment. Some of the advantages he found by doing this was: Students try harder because they hear themselves and want to sound better. He said one student went home and practiced and came back saying he was determined to sound better than he did the day before; Parents like it because they can hear student improvement, If using ipod, you can put the recording straight into itunes and parents can hear from home, or you can burn a CD at the end of the year.
With graphic organizers, Long used Inspiration and Kidspiration in the normal ways of brainstorming and organizing thoughts, but he also used it for storyboarding for digital storytelling projects. I thought this was another inventive way to use this software and I would like to try it with any projects we do in Comic Life next year.
Svec's ipod and iread program is what interested me the most. In this program, students would check out the text version of a book and an ipod with the audio verison to read along with the text to enhance fluency. They were able to do this project through an initial grant and bought something like 200 ipod nanos. The kids only use it at home and check the ipods out when they leave school and back in, in the morning and the ipods charge during the day. In the length of time they have been doing this project only 1 pod was ever lost and the parent quickly replaced it. That's pretty good numbers! They buy the audio book versions off of itunes. One teacher asked, "What if the students don't pay attention to the audio" and Long explained that that may occur at first, but the students quickly use both as they find it better to understand the both the text and the audio.
With Gaming, Svec uses Cranium Core, an online program that has read alouds and games, and then they add discuss and defend groups, which allows the students to build their reading, writing and listening skills, adds an engagement factor, and resources to intervention strategy. One of the main aspects this program works with is main idea and author’s purpose. The presenters said that the students would actually begin arguing in class about author’s purpose with each other because they were so into it. It really allowed the students to have social interaction with each other and let them talk about the issues in the book. The price really can't be beat either; $365 a year for the entire school and it sounds like any book you read, you can use this program with it. I really want to check out this website and this program!
Then Long talked about podcasting. He's got three student teams that he has put together: 1) MOD Squad (Multimedia on Demand), which does digital storytelling and guides, 2) Tech Ambassadors, and 3) Team TLC. With the training he has done at their school, there are over 200 teacher websites, with over 900 podcasts from 2 years, and they get an average of 150,000 hits a week! Absolutely amazing stuff! One of the teachers he works with does a podcast a week, and throught their podcasting (this nearly broke my heart) a parent who is serving in Iraq and was able to hear his daughter and stay in contact with her. They showed three examples of student podcasting: !) Student who did a book review, but told the parts of the book that held the conflict, the resolution, etc. 2)Students did a promotional commercials for books. This example was Farenheit 451-imagine a world without books? And from there they created a story to get kids to read the book. 3) Students did Q&A sessions. One student acted as host, and another student who read the book and answers the questions. The student used anecdotes when answering and talked about how his life experiences are similar to those of the main character.
The last thing we looked at were web chats. One of the groups Svec worked with was a group she created called the GStar Girls, who asked one day how they could talk with the author of the book they had finished reading. By email, the teacher contacted the author and the girls got to use ichat to ask author questions. This could also probably be done with Skype. I've heard of a lot of people, including Oprah Winfrey who are using Skype to communicate.
Great session with lots of great ideas!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
More Learning
I was reading David Warlick's blog today, 2Cents Worth, and he was talking about PLN's or personal learning networks. This made me think about our leadership module from class and how we are working to create our own professional development and leadership plans. He made some great comments about knowing when too much technology is too much and when you need to take a break and enjoy the sunshine! That was certainly true today as I sat outside on my porch after work and caught up on the additions to my Google Reader.
In keeping with Mr. Warlick's suggestion, I think I found a great website to add my "network". In tomorrow's Website Wednesday, I feature an Instructional Technology Department from Wichita Public Schools. I found all kinds of great resources here and it's amazing to see how much they are doing. I especially like their newsletter section, called Tech Focus, where they explain in video (!) some of the projects schools within their district are doing. I watched a video on podcasting tonight and I was very impressed. It also seems appropriate since we are creating podcasts in class this week. Look under January's features.
I also recently extended my "network" when I learned more about wikis from some colleagues. We came up with a way to share our SOL resources for all middle school teachers in the county to see and use. It's called MSSOL and online SOL resources are divided into each curriculum category.
In keeping with Mr. Warlick's suggestion, I think I found a great website to add my "network". In tomorrow's Website Wednesday, I feature an Instructional Technology Department from Wichita Public Schools. I found all kinds of great resources here and it's amazing to see how much they are doing. I especially like their newsletter section, called Tech Focus, where they explain in video (!) some of the projects schools within their district are doing. I watched a video on podcasting tonight and I was very impressed. It also seems appropriate since we are creating podcasts in class this week. Look under January's features.
I also recently extended my "network" when I learned more about wikis from some colleagues. We came up with a way to share our SOL resources for all middle school teachers in the county to see and use. It's called MSSOL and online SOL resources are divided into each curriculum category.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
What's a podcast?
Back from Spring Break, it's so hard to get rolling again!!
Right after I suggest podcasting to a teacher, the most frequent question I get asked is, "what's a podcast?" It's come to be a question I dread because most of the time the person I'm talking with doesn't like my answer. First, I relate it to a radio show, then I give examples of the few I've worked on. I think part of the problem comes when I start explaining about the recording process, which isn't hard! But that seems to be the point where I lose my audience.
It can be frustrating, because I know what a great tool they are! I've seen students get really creative and use their imaginations to their fullest potential. They really get into the process and start watching what they're saying, and then the recording has to be just right, and the music has to be awesome (in their opinion). This all shows me that the student wants to achieve and take the time to learn something new. What kid isn't going to love talking into a microphone? They eat it up!
Here are the benefits to podcasting:
I use podcasts almost daily, both professionally and personally. I use them to continue my education. Every once in a while I will run into a website that offers a podcast of a seminar that someone did. I download it and listen at lunchtime, or on the way home, or when I'm exercising. I'm recently found out about Conference Connections, a free way to listen to speakers from educational conferences around the globe. In January I had planned to go to FETC, but I couldn't really afford it and I was already going to two others later in the year. But I didn't miss out! I type conference connections into itunes and viola! There are recordings (or podcasts!) of the speaker's presentation. I also use it to keep up on movie news. Did you know Teller of Penn and Teller is directing MacBeth at the Folger Theater in DC? Neither did I until I listened to an interview on my way to New Jersey recently. How cool is that?
Right after I suggest podcasting to a teacher, the most frequent question I get asked is, "what's a podcast?" It's come to be a question I dread because most of the time the person I'm talking with doesn't like my answer. First, I relate it to a radio show, then I give examples of the few I've worked on. I think part of the problem comes when I start explaining about the recording process, which isn't hard! But that seems to be the point where I lose my audience.
It can be frustrating, because I know what a great tool they are! I've seen students get really creative and use their imaginations to their fullest potential. They really get into the process and start watching what they're saying, and then the recording has to be just right, and the music has to be awesome (in their opinion). This all shows me that the student wants to achieve and take the time to learn something new. What kid isn't going to love talking into a microphone? They eat it up!
Here are the benefits to podcasting:
- The students still have to do the writing process
- The student can be as creative as they want
- The student becomes instantly more engaged in the curriculum
- Students learn across curriculums
I use podcasts almost daily, both professionally and personally. I use them to continue my education. Every once in a while I will run into a website that offers a podcast of a seminar that someone did. I download it and listen at lunchtime, or on the way home, or when I'm exercising. I'm recently found out about Conference Connections, a free way to listen to speakers from educational conferences around the globe. In January I had planned to go to FETC, but I couldn't really afford it and I was already going to two others later in the year. But I didn't miss out! I type conference connections into itunes and viola! There are recordings (or podcasts!) of the speaker's presentation. I also use it to keep up on movie news. Did you know Teller of Penn and Teller is directing MacBeth at the Folger Theater in DC? Neither did I until I listened to an interview on my way to New Jersey recently. How cool is that?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
