Writing Conferences via Screencast

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/4414374988/

I love hearing about ways to do things better and more efficiently, especially when student learning is involved.  This is probably a large part of why I love Twitter and Pinterest (as well as face-to-face collaboration) -- I love to get new ideas that I can try out in my classroom.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36822313@N06/3721705286/

With that said, I've been thinking a lot about a goal that I set for my teaching at the beginning of this year: to provide more timely feedback to my students on their writing. I have found that there is never enough time to conference with all of the students in a given class period...and inevitably, there are always students who are waiting to talk with the teacher about their writing.


So, naturally, I was checking Twitter on a typical evening (probably sometime around 11pm) for ideas that might help me with my goal of providing more timely feedback on student writing....when, lo and behold, I came across a blog post from Amy Mayer of +FriedTechnology talking about Video Grading Using Google Docs and Jing.  The article blew my mind.  It was exactly what I was looking for!

• The basic idea is that you use a screencasting tool, such as Jing (free!) or Camtasia (free trial), to record video and audio feedback / comments to each student about a piece of his or her digital writing.
• I don't rehearse or script out what I want to say because I conduct the writing conference as if I were sitting down with the student to read through his or her writing together.  Once I had done 3-4, I really started to get the hang of it and wasn't worried about making a mistake (it's more realistic that way!).
• Upload each screencast to Screencast.com, which will create a link for the video.
• Then, you post the link on their digital writing assignment in Google Docs using the comment feature.  

• Students can watch the screencast of your feedback when they have time (at home, at school, etc.), make any necessary revisions, and share or submit their next draft.  
• They can pause the video to make revisions or corrections to their work immediately, or they can replay the screencast at any time.
• You've heard of flipped instruction?  Well, this is a way to flip your feedback to students, so that they can become more self-directed, efficacious and resourceful writers.

Here is what the screencast looks like when the student clicks on the link:

And, here are a few samples of what the videos look like: 

I am by no means an expert on screencasting, but it's been really cool to see the results of using video feedback with students' writing.  Students are excited to watch my video comments for them and they are very efficient at making corrections and/or revisions while watching the video.  I have also been using the video comments as a resource for follow-up writing conferences with students.

After completing several screencasted writing conferences on my 4th grade ELs' latest writing project, I have definitely honed in on a few areas of writing we're going to practice: organization, S-V agreement, complex sentences, and varying the beginning of sentences.

Screencasting has been a  really helpful tool for my students and I, and I'd love to hear about other ways people use screencasting in their classrooms.  Feel free to leave a comment below with your ideas, comments and questions!

Khan Academy

A big part of my job is collaborating and co-teaching with mainstream classroom teachers, so I always try to keep an eye out for technology that could be helpful for English learners (as well as other learners) in content area classes, such as math, science, social studies and language arts.

I happened to turn on the TV for a few minutes this afternoon and I caught a good portion of 60 Minutes, which was featuring Khan Academy - an edtech site that hosts thousands of free educational videos on (what seems like) any subject you may be interested in learning. I have used Khan Academy a several times with elementary and adult ed math classes, and have had positive results.


I see Khan Academy fitting into math and science instruction with English learners for a few main reasons:

1. Students can learn at their own pace - they can stop, rewind, or fast forward to hear and see the information as many times as they need to really understand the concept.
   
2. The videos provide modeling of both the new concept, as well as of the processing language necessary to explain and describe the new concept.
3. Students can practice various concepts with practice problems, and are offered a corresponding video to watch if they get stuck on a problem. A personal tutor...just a click away.
   
4. Teachers can track students' progress on Khan Academy by creating a free account and then creating a class list (students log in using a Google Apps account, and then add the teacher as a Coach). Once a student begins working on a set of practice problems, data about the # of problems right/wrong, as well as a record of the type of problems attempted are all accessible by the teacher/coach. This allows teachers to closely monitor progress and confer with students in a meaningful, specific and individualized way.

This year will be the first year I'll have students add me as a coach so I can track their progress. I'm pretty excited to see how well it works and will definitely report back!

For the record, the categories of topics covered by Khan Academy videos are (as of right now):

• math
• science
• computer science
• finance & econ
• humanities
  
• test prep

Have you used Khan Academy or some other screencasted video lessons? If so, which ones, and would you recommend them to other teachers?

Thanks for reading and happy Labor Day weekend! Hope the start of the school year goes smoothly for everyone!

--Andrea