A couple of weeks ago I was in my car listening to a program on CBC Radio One – I believe it was “As It Happens” – and they were talking to two high school chemistry teachers in Colorado who were looking at creating more time for hand-on activities and one on one time for students in their classroom by pre-recording their “lectures” and providing them to students to listen to in the evening prior to class, preparing them for the “work” portion of the learning during class time. In essense, they were reversing the lecture/homework paradigm to have students intake at home and do “homework” at school.
I was immediately caught by the idea, but as I was in my car I didn’t have any means to record the information for further reference. Fortunately – and I should have anticipated this – Karl Fisch picked this up and fills us in on some of the details. Apparently, one of his teachers had also run across the two innovative fellows – I now know their names as Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, who teach high school chemistry in Woodland Park, Colorado. They have established a website, Educational Vodcasting, which will help teachers and others learn more about the practice.
This is something that a couple of teachers have also asked me about, but we have not progressed past the stage of conversations about the possibilities. Armed with their website and a few other links, I am sure several teachers on staff will be interested.
There really isn’t any reason why this couldn’t work. Screen-casting a “lecture” can easily be done using the record feature in the SMART Notebook software (or any number of other tools), and the videos can easily be uploaded/hosted/managed in a wikispace. Wikispaces will allow a single file size of 20 MB, which would translate into roughly a 8-10 minute video. Longer segments would simply be snipped into two or more parts.
Or, better yet, Brian Hatak, the teacher at Arapahoe HS where Karl works, has started his trial. His “lessons” are posted on Teacher Tube – a moderated, education friendly version of You Tube. A sample is below.
What issues arise with this? Some teachers have raised concerns about their personal privacy but as teachers, aren’t we all public figures in some way?
Part of developing professional learning communities is about breaking down the isolation and supporting teachers sharing. This is certainly promoting teachers learning best practices from each other. Talk about breaking down the walls!
tags: technology, education, whipple, learning
Interesting idea for sure Jeff. I think the CBC show you heard was Spark – http://www.cbc.ca/spark/blog/2008/08/the_dog_ate_my_vodcast.html (They cover some great stuff.)
While I think the idea of increasing the time for hands on learning and one-to-one instruction is great, I hesitate on shifting the preparation time to “the night before” because I would like to see us reduce the amount kids spend on “homework” rather than increase it.
That being said, I see great potential in this for students who choose to review the material from home, or for those who wish to work ahead of the class. Also – we have a lot of students who spend a lot of time sitting on busses – podcasts would be a great way of using that time effectively.
I’d like to echo Jeannine’s comments. My first response was that many students, especially in the senior grades, already have a lot of homework as well as other commitments. In the previous school where I taught, it was not uncommon for my grade 11 and 12 biology students to have jobs working 20-30 hours per week.
Having said that, I think that teachers recording lessons can be very powerful. Sometimes repetition is all a student needs to finally ‘get’ a concept. Sometimes a student just isn’t ‘on’ when you deliver a lesson–if they can go back to it when they are more receptive–great! And how great would it be if you’re prepping for a substitute teacher (who may not be a specialist in your subject area) and you can just ask them to play your lesson?!
So yes, record your “lectures”, post them for your students as well as anyone else who is interested, but be careful about how much of your students’ personal time that you are asking for.