8/31/12

Well, I had a lot of technical problems with uploading the video I created before "poof" it disappeared.  So, I resorted to posting four Khan Academy videos for them to view.  I hated that.  I wanted to have them get the "me" experience.  A bunch of the students didn't watch the video, so we had to use class time for them to watch the video. It was pretty frustrating.  Some students are forgetting their passwords so we have to take class time to reset and figure them out, depending on the website they are trying to access.  I have trouble keeping one student busy as this students is proficient at everything tried so far.  Towards the end of the 85 minute block, students get a bit tired of doing math, so I try to give them easy remedial topics to work on so that 1) I ensure they don't have learning gaps and 2) they have easy success at some point with this work.

8/29/12

Three out of 11 people did not watch the video before class.  I had them watch the video at the start of class.  I noticed that today, people started really pushing to get work done.  They were very focused and intent on their math for a whole hour and a half.  I was amazed.  I had wondered if they would be bored after about half that time.  Students were working at many different levels, but all very diligently.  Some would help others with questions.  Other students preferred to ask me for help.  Very good day.

8/27/12 - Day 1

Today is the big day!  After a pre-test, a short lesson and a few minor computer issues and a short lesson, the class is busily working away with Khan Academy.  I notice that I am able to help individual students with their individual questions.  Since this is the first day, lots of students are completing early, so I'm having them go to a more advanced level of the same type of problem.  The Khan Academy class report lets me view how students are doing with their problems.  Additionally, I am having students keep a class notebook of every problem they've solved.  The notebooks stay in my room so they have them every day.  Today we did the exercises "Evaluating Expressions in One Variable" and "Evaluating Expressions in Two Variables".  I am getting better at reading the info from Khan Academy and helping students see when they are ready to progress. The information available to me is very detailed and I can see that students are already starting to spread out in terms of how fast they are learning.  This will lead to a master learning type environment.  I better get prepared!

My Flippin' Adventure!

So, today I attempted to create my second lecture movie.  I made one last year, but it was a screen-cast of a PowerPoint and very easy to do.  I realized that this method would not work for this lesson pretty quickly when I saw I had used a Smart Notebook to create the lesson.  Hence, I would need to find an app to annotate the .pdf and speak all while recording on my iPad.  After a bit of research, I discovered that the app "Explain Everything" was the solution to my issue.  It worked fantastically.  I was able to edit each slide and get the video down to the 15 minutes or less allowed by YouTube.  Monday is the first day of my "flipping adventure."  I will post how things go!