Reteaching with Student Screencasts

This idea came from Gini Pierce-Cummings and originated with the math teachers at Desmond Middle School in Madera,CA. She explained it to me at a CoffeeCUE meeting where we discussed lots of edtech goodness. As soon as she explained it I said, "I have to try that. I think I will tomorrow!" As I stated in a previous post, I am guilty of wanting to try everything I hear about. In this case, it was a brilliant idea.

The concept in a nutshell: students create a screen cast of a vocabulary term or concept, email the video link to me, I turn it into a QR code, post it on the wall, students scan the QR code and now have all their classmate's videos on their iPads.

I decided to try it with my honors freshman class to gauge the difficulty. My instruction included:

• telling them to find a partner
• having them choose one of the 8 parts of speech we had been working with
• giving them 3 minutes to play with their screen casting app (at the time we used Screenchomp, but I like Educaeations better)
• giving them 20 minutes to create their screen cast with the understanding that all freshmen would be using their videos to study

The next day I had the QR codes posted and they went around the room scanning them all. There is nothing more rewarding than hearing teenagers say, "Wow, this is cool!", especially in a classroom. . . My non-honors classes scanned them as well and we discussed which videos were most or least helpful in preparation for creating their own for the next unit.

 

The best thing about this idea is that it can be used in ANY subject, which is rare in high school.

 

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