Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Using Video to Stimulate Thinking

Michael has a Year 2 and 3 class at North East Valley Normal School. He has had a great idea to encourage more students at the school to participate in sports and clubs outside of school time. It would be difficult to measure if Michael's idea of getting parents to video children doing these activities and showing this in assembly would have an effect on other children taking up a sport or club.
We discussed ways to approach this differently so collecting evidence would be easier for Michael. We thought that interviewing children who had a talent in something outside of school and asking them if they felt like this was recognized at school or there was a place at school to celebrate this. Then having a time in assembly for this sharing videos of the children participating in their hobby outside of school. Later we could ask the same questions and see if children felt their skills and talents were recognised in the school.

Michael has had a tv screen in his classroom as a teacher modeling station for a year. He is using it in a lot of ways, I suggested that perhaps his research could be an inquiry into lots of ways to use this resources effectively. He has been using video in the class on the tv screen from Utube. He joined Utube as a member so he can make videos his favourites and does not have to look for them each time he visits and so the screen is not so busy when he is showing the videos to his class. This also means that he knows what content is on the screen and there will be no surprises. Michael could download the videos but as he only wants to use them once or twice it didn't seem worth his time or the storage space it would take to do this.

I hope Michael considers this as an Action Research topic as I think it would be of high interest to the many teachers who will have these type of resources in their room soon and will have to work out how the potential of these resources can be harnessed. Whatever he does I am sure it will be fantastic.

North East Valley Junior classes are studying Creepy Crawlies so below I have put a few resources which are really handy for screens, projectors and interactive whiteboards (or computers) for this and other science/ technology topics.

Video sites for the classroom
Utube
Teacher Tube
Maori Tube
ARKive- videos, pictures and facts about creatures
BBC Videos
Exploratorium- includes microscopic pictures
Futures Channel this is great to show maths and science concepts in the real world
VideoJug- instructions on video

Pictures for science
EduPic

Websites and Games
The Animal Kingdom
BBC Science Teaching Resources

Also Digital Learning Objects on NZ Maths but these need a password, your school can sign up for one. I used these types of activities with small whiteboards so the children could write or draw their thinking while you paused the game for the answer.
http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/digital-learning-objects


This is an example of an inquiry into teaching with a projector and how a teacher's thinking can change when continuing to improve the engagement of their students.

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