Home Videos: Intro

I finally had enough. I mean, how many times do I have to answer same question? I wasn’t frustrated with the students...I was frustrated with myself. His furrowed brow and clenched fist told the whole story. “How do you expect me to do this when you’re not here to help me? It’s so easy to do it when I watch you do the example. But when I’m at home doing the work by myself...oy!” Admittedly, since this frustration first emerged a few years ago I’ve morphed my homework practice a bit: not as many problems and more of them done in class with me there to help. But, still, they do have some work to complete on their own.

My response remained constant: “Take good notes!” ... “Call a math buddy!” Unsatisfactory.

I decided to take a swing at delivering a better answer. To make a long story short (I’ll deliver the longer story over a series of shorter posts), I devised a way to record my pen strokes on a tablet PC using my Toshiba Tablet, my Macbook Pro, and Pinnacle’s hardware/software for Mac. I then recorded my voice using Garageband, and synced the two in iMovie, then uploaded them to my Youtube channel for the students to access, and embedded them on my website.

The Verdict

I uploaded my first set of Youtube notes for my Advanced Algebra class a little over two years ago. Surprisingly, my inbox housed positive responses from my students and from students in other classes, students enrolled in home study, students that tried to keep current with the class while vacationing, and high school and college students in other states. Thankfully, my work with Youtube notes, Message Boards on my website, student projects and utilizing cable content earned some recognition this year with the Cable Industry, but I’m still not completely satisfied.

The Problem

I have not yet mastered the art of capturing everything that occurs in class in a slidedeck that is meant to stand apart from the interactions that drive our classroom discussions from time to time. Typically, the slidedecks I use in class are a bit different than what I deliver in these videos. For example, today I took my classes outside and we measured some distances and then calculated some observations in groups. How do I translate that effectively using this tablet PC? Yeah, I tried taping our activities but it just doesn’t work for the one student watching at home. There might be a clever way around that, but I haven’t figured it out.

My Honest Assessment

I feel like I can do a better job, but not sure exactly how to accomplish that. I’ve tried different formulas but keep returning to where I am right now. Maybe the recognition is because I’m the first one trying it (that I know of, anyway), and not necessarily the one that’s perfected it. For the record, though, I’m just happy to be part of the journey. Self-criticism aside, I feel like it's opened up learning opportunities for a lot of my students that need a pause/rewind button without the embarrassment that's tied with hitting those buttons too many times in a classroom full of your peers. I'll cover the reflections a little bit more in depth in future posts.

I usually make each video at the end of the day, and they take about 15 minutes each to make, with about a 30 minute upload time each, for a grand total of 90 minute a day from start to finish, with only 40 of those minutes involving me sitting in front of a computer. With the time consideration, and the fact that I want my family to remember my face by the weekend, I usually skip over some of the fancier post-production luxuries that the Adobe suite or Final Cut Studio afford me.

This is where you come in: I want to make these better and would love some feedback. Give me some ideas that I can run with that don’t involve me forfeiting meals or sleep.

So, what’s the goal then?

The goal isn’t necessarily to recreate the classroom environment, but to give students that might be stuck on a concept in a problem access to help anytime in a digital environment. That said, these videos might not be burning up the Youtube charts, but they serve the purpose that I want them to serve.

So What Next?

In the next few days I will be posting how and why I do it, alternatives to this method (Jing, Smarboards, etc.), and some reflections after two years of delivering content through Youtube. In the meantime, here are a couple of videos that are fairly representative of what I’m doing (please excuse the goofy voice, and blatant copyright infringements):

Ellipses:

Parabolas