Screencasting as a Teaching Tool

My experience Organizing my Online Life was interesting. I used Screencast-o-matic to record my voice. When you use this program (or the similar product called MS Office Mix) it records what you see on your screen and your voice together. I think the challenge word is SYNCHRONOUSLY. And I got it to work! I made a recording of me talking about Evernote and how to use it.

I'm sure you've seen these kinds of presentations before. If done well, they could be a great teaching tool: something you can do once and play again and again. That is, you can show it 1st hour, and again 2nd hour, you get the idea.

I think there could be lots of applications for this kind of tool in teaching, not just giving a tutorial on using a software product. I bet one could even make a lesson or part of a lesson on practically anything. I don't think it will be like Azimov's Mechanical Teacher from “The Fun They Had,” at least I don't plan for it to be like that in my classroom... But I'm starting to think of it as something for my toolbox, something to record teaching performances that can be finessed and rehearsed and then recorded.

One thing that is really neat is that there is a pause button. So if you're not ready for the show to continue, you just stop for a while and think about what comes next.

John

The game's the thing

I am not the best person to ask to comment on computer games. I appreciate what others find in them. But for me...

My generation had the first Atari consoles in elementary school. Pong! We grew up with the Video Arcade at the mall. Asteroids! PacMan! We watched games on computers take off...

Now I know that “video” games and games on the computer are not one and the same. But there is some overlap. I wonder how the two have informed each other over the years...

I remember playing video games at my friends' houses. As the kid with poor hand-eye coordination, I did not enjoy it much. Here's how it always went down: it would happen at a friend's house (never at mine, I never had any consoles or game systems. Never asked for one, I think). My turn to play: I would die. My friend's turn to play (It was their game; they played all the time): “here I am doing this; watch me do this; this spot is tricky; O, that was a close one.” I got to watch. I had not much incentive to watch and learn what happens on level X because I would never get beyond level 1)...

For this reason and a few others, I have never cared much for electronic games. I see people tuned out to other (real, non-virtual people) engrossed in their computers, tables, phones, and devices doing social media, this or that 'game” (and saying they're “working” usually!) I see my kids not playing outside or reading, I see my wife doing FB on her phone all evening... what does this have to do with educational games? Enough for me; I don't draw a very fine line. It's all staring at a screen...

Yes, I'm woefully backwards, uncool, a Luddite, a square (and whatever my teen-aged daughter can think up to call me). I don't get it. But I did try some games. The one I liked is called Topropa. It's a geography game. I kill at geography, so there is most of the attraction. And there's not much to learn (good for someone with an abysmally low frustration threshold when it comes to technology). Just match the river, or the city, or the battle, or whatever on the map and find out immediately if you're right. It is very probable that the reason I like it would also be the same reason most people would not...

So what about people who like computer games? (That's everybody but me, right?) I'm glad for them. This is the golden age of computer games, by all appearances. I'm glad there are some good games, some educational games. I'm glad to talk to people about games and why they think they are good. Tell me stories about a game! I will listen. Tell me if you think there is a place for your game in my classroom. Just don't ask me to play. Or to watch you play it for too long.

Computerized testing

Yes, I have some thoughts on the topic, informed by some knowledge and experience. My first experience with Smarter Balanced was at a local school where I worked last year. This school was one of just a few given the chance to test the test. The students had already done their MEAP testing. And there was NWEA testing. A normal person would think that would probably be about enough testing, right? Enter Smarter Balanced.

“Smarter Balance is coming next year,' we were told. (Although maybe it's not...)

http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2014/06/meap_changes_what_to_expect.html

But while SB was still the future back in May we gave it to the kids at my school. “You are lucky to get a chance to try this. Not many schools get to test it. So you will have an advantage when you take it for real next year, since you'll be used to it,” the students were told. What goes through students' heads at any given time? I'm sure I cannot say. But I bet more than a few were thinking, “it doesn't count? I'm not going to take it seriously.”

The day of the test was hot. The testing room was hot. There was lots of confusion about the codes to get the students signed in. It took over half an hour before the last student was finally testing. It was a reading test. I walked the room, trying to keep students on task. Some were on task, some were not. No different than any other days. The test made no accommodation for students with special needs. Staff is not allowed to read for those kids for reading tests, so there was not much I could do for those students, other than encourage them to keep at it and try to finish.

The test itself seemed to test scrolling as much as it measured reading comprehension. A research article I read recently, Mangen, et al (2013), about the effects on reading comprehension of paper versus computer screen, informs my thinking about testing, especially reading testing, on a screen. I like the article because it confirms my bias against reading on a computer. Yes, I am biased, and I hate reading on computer. A lovely study would be to have half take the test on the computer and half on paper and see who did better.

So I am skeptical. I doubt that standardized testing helps kids learn. I lament the instructional time lost to administer a third standardized test in the same year. I wish the authorities could make up their minds about which core—common, uncommon, or otherwise—they want, and which test. And I am not impressed with an entirely computerized test. What makes it so special?

Mangen, A., Walgermo, B. R., & Brønnick, K. (2013). Reading linear texts on paper versus 

      computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension. International Journal of Educational 

      Research, 58, 61-68

The following are my initial thoughts on John Dewey' s My Pedagogic Creed

Dewey conceives of being educated—I say “being educated” because I think he would embrace the ambiguity of the phrase as both process and the product—as participating in one's community, having a sense of social responsibility. This sense of social responsibility is not so much “knowing of” as “knowing how.” Dewey writes, “I believe that the only way to make the child conscious of his social heritage is to enable him to perform those fundamental types of activity which makes civilization what it is.” In other words, doing is the key. His belief that “...all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race,” suggests not just sharing ideas and ideals in a passive, contemplative sense, but as action. We should understand this participation as the compunction to contribute to the commonweal, rather than merely going along for the ride, hoping on board the the social “bus” to get to a place of personal enrichment. Indeed, the educated—again process and product—conceives, “of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs.”

If a sense of belonging, of connectedness to community is the first step in education, and a concern for the community's welfare is the second, the third, as I read Dewey, is an awareness of how one fits in. This awareness of how comes from being able to make distinctions. Dewey speaks of the, “gradual differentiation out of the primitive unconscious unity of social life.” The process of moving past this “unconscious unity” involves making distinctions. The most important of these distinctions involve developing a sense of one's place in society.

...all questions of the grading of the child and his promotion should be determined by reference to the same standard. Examinations are of use only so far as they test the child's fitness for social life and reveal the place in which he can be of most service and where he can receive the most help.

Thus assessment should primarily be about measuring how far and how well this awareness has progressed in each individual.

I think this notion is at odds with the values that most of us in education today professes to one degree or another. We are all about letting the child find herself, not preempting self-discovery, as if this were the purpose of education. Dewey wanted advancement in school to be tied to knowing oneself not for the idle purpose of self-discovery, but rather to make sure that self-knowledge would not proceed independently of a concern for “the welfare of the group.” Implicit in any real, meaningful commitment to the welfare of the group is the willingness give up one's personal gain if it conflicts with the group's betterment.

Our “civilization,” as I read Dewey, is not just what we profess and value as words and beliefs, but what we do, what kind of work we choose to perform, our individual vocations that collectively make our communities function and thrive.

John Dewey, J. (1897), My pedagogic creed. School Journal, 54 (January), 77-80.