Comments on: Nick Hershman’s Follow Up: Will It Hit The Corner

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:13:51 +0000

I thought it'd be great to try after watching some of the videos that Kate Nowak had posted on her geometry class blog. She also posted student feedback along with her reflections. Video lessons are not simply extensions of class time. They don't allow students to acquire content and ideas as easily as in the classroom. Kate put it better. I've only tried video homework in a few cases and usually found that it didn't compare to a few minutes of class time and some individual attention. At least for my middle school 7th and 8th graders. I also have worked with advanced students in 7th grade who took entirely online courses and acquired all the content through the types of videos we're talking about. I think the kids who soak up the info are much more rare than the kids who don't use the internet as a learning tool, in Kate's words "They still really, really think the Internet is for cute kittens and flirting with their gender of preference, and they would rather see a live Dramatic Performance by their classroom teacher." In general, I have yet to see good evidence to the contrary. Maybe the videos require some extra layers of teaching and guidance to get students learning from them.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:01:25 +0000

Monika, I like the idea. There are some spectacular successes and spectacular failures in its execution. Personally, I would like to see a larger body of evidence and a more coherent strategy before I committed, but the upside is obvious to me.

By: monika hardy

monika hardy — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:44:05 +0000

nice Nick. I left you a note on your youtube site as well… wondering what age kids you have,… what classes…

This is a side note (from will it hit the corner) but I think it’s something that will allow for more dy/danism-inquisitory-fun in the classroom. And once set, encourages more self-automation on the kids part.. less help on the teacher’s part.

Nick has some videos on youtube ie: how to solve systems…
I have some collected via voicethread and jing… for the boxed math.. the standardized stuff…
Brightstorm, MIT, other places with free how to videos.

I think if we pooled these for each math topic, and had them available to kids per our class sites… the fixed content could happen in a more individualistic time frame freeing up “together in a room time” for kool beans thinking/questioning/solving…
I know the standardized curriculum often gets in the way of the beauty/fun/reality of math… we think mostly because pace for learning it is so individual.

Here’s an example of what we did this year for alg 2
http://screencast.com/t/NzFmNTlmNGQt