Jeff and I concluded our second year of podcasting about shifting schools to the School/Learning 2.0 model. We would like to thank all of our guests who shared their insights and practical ideas to help students, teachers, administrators and parents work together in the shifting process.
You can listen to shows directly from the SOS Podcast page or subscribe through iTunes.
Here are the Essential Questions we discussed this past year:
How to shift when the administrators are not on board?
What prevents administrators from shifting?
What are some shifted practices in our schools?
How to recruit shifted teachers?
Once shifted, where do we go next?
How to make the shift systemic and sustainable in our schools?
Which comes first, shifted practices or 1:1 laptop program?
How to move students from being dependent to independent learners?
How are we preparing pre-service teachers to be shifted educators?
How to measure how shifted your school is?
How to do a school tech makeover on the cheap?
How can we help teachers take more risks in their teaching and learning?
I listened to a Wes Fryer and Karen Montgomery’s podcast last week where they spoke about creating online vodcasts as tutorials for solving math problems which are called Mathcasts. They spoke with Tim Falhberg the originator of Mathcasts. As VoiceThread is probably the easiest way to post a vodcast, they felt that it was the way to get started. What intrigues me is that these online tutorials put students into the role of teacher working to design the vodcast and produce it for an audience of fellow students. We know what that means for quality learning on the scale of effective learning (i.e., Lecture> Reading> Audio-Visual> Demonstration> Discussion> to the most effective Practice by Doing). With a public audience, we also know it pushes students to do a better job in completing and publishing their work.
Here are links to resources to help you learn more about Mathcasts:
Introduction to Mathcasts home page
What a Mathcast looks like
A Directory of Mathcasts by grade level
How to get started
Patty O’Flynn shared how she is using Mathcasts with HS students. Check out her blog on mathcasts.
The Mathcasts I looked at centered around pen and number drawing on the screen with voiceovers. Looking to expand on this especially with one’s more lateral thinking students, think about challenging students to find other ways to use visuals to teach the skill or concept. I can see story telling students illustrating their voiceover using cartoon characters dealing with situations that involve the use of math. It might be a reach but for older students, the TV show “Numb3rs” is a big hit that uses math to solve mysteries. They might find themselves as actors in their own Mathcast drama! It is all about making connections and application to new situations to really reach profound understanding with total student engagement.
Dan Robinson at Taipei American school is leading out a grade level of students in their pursuit to learn more about the adults in their school community. Technology in the form of MP3 recorders and cameras are being used as students develop their questions for interviews with adults who support their learning in the elementary school. Photos of these adults taken by students along with the the interviews they record will be posted on the Web for students to share with their parents. Language arts skills of designing questions and using interview techniques are a part of this project as well.
