It has been four years since I had my own math class. This past school year I was asked to teach seventh grade math, pre-algebra, and algebra class for about six weeks. My computer classes were all shifted to the morning, several adjustments were made in the number of times per week I taught computer class, and the afternoon was dedicated to math. I am recording some new insights and how easy it is to reactivate old websites to quickly help students in class.
Math Podcasts
I made a number of screencasts several years ago. I use JingPro. I used to use screencasts for quiz and test prep for the students. I knew right away that I would resurrect my Mrs. Oro's Study Cast page on Podomatic. It was fantastic because the dedicated page was right there waiting for new uploads, it still feeds into iTunes, and is easy to use as a standalone page.
My aha moment this time was using it for test review. I take as much time as we need as a class to review tests. This year, I decided to post test reviews too. I still asked the students if they wanted to review specific problems. This was an added support. The value of reviewing the test in class is that students can show how they did the problem and as a group we can talk about alternate methods of doing a problem. The students still really want to have time in class to understand their mistakes.
The value added by creating the review podcast is that students can, and did, take the test or quiz home and play the podcast to hear my explanation and try to do the problem again on their own.
Math Wiki
I had a wiki, initially, as a class website. This year, I realized it was a perfect place to store files for the students to review at home or download. It is difficult hearing a student say they didn't do a review or homework because they forgot a paper in the locker at school. I had the use of an interactive whiteboard and would sometimes put up problems to work on in the evening on the spur of the moment during class. The wiki became a quick way to link to a PDF or image file.
This is an example of a screen capture from a whiteboard assignment. This is an example of a PDF created from a Word document. We use Schoolnotes to post homework assignments. It was simple to add a hyperlink to the wiki pages from Schoolnotes. The advantage to this method is the students go directly from my math Schoolnotes page to the actual page containing the screen capture or PDF file. No need for passwords or remembering other websites.
Edmodo
The students and I had been using Edmodo in the computer classroom for the entire school year. I immediately created groups for the math classes when I learned I would be teaching math temporarily. Edmodo gave me a very different and extremely useful way to interact with my students. I posted links to all of my supports for the students. I was able to ask them questions and store them electronically in one place. It is private and just between my students and I. The following two examples are from post-work on a test the students took:
In this case, I was able to see what the student understood of their mistakes. Knowing the student in class combined with the response helped me see that they were ready to move on.
Through
the next student's response, I was able to see where the student and I
needed to work one-on-one. The child came in at recess and with the
extra help and some more practice problem became confident in filling in
the gap in their knowledge.
I could have done the same thing by having the students do their reflections on paper, but it saved valuable time. I was able to look at their answers that evening and know if there were still areas that needed addressing in the class the next afternoon. I also knew who I wanted to make appointments with at recess, before, or after school for extra support.
Interactive Whiteboard
I did not have an interactive whiteboard when I was teaching four years ago. I did not integrate its use in the classroom in any particularly interactive way during the time in the math class from April through May. It was a great improvement for my lessons, personally, because I was able to save the flipchart and look at what we did right before the next class. At the end of class, it was so easy to see exactly what homework problems were assigned when I updated my Schoolnotes page.
The students enjoyed the chance to solve problems and choose different colors when they were writing. This was not a stellar use of the tool, but anything that gets a student more involved in their desire to learn is a good thing.
The other positive side to the IWB was the ability to take lessons and narrate them for the podcast.
If I was going to teach math on a full time basis, I would look to make the lessons more of an analysis tool and much more interactive.
Voting Devices
We have a set of 32 Activote devices in the school. I was really interested in seeing how I could use the devices to promote student learning in class. One method I tried was doing homework review with the Activotes. It took a lot of effort on my part to create good answer choices for the problems. It was actually pretty amazing to find where common mistakes were happening based on the pattern of responses from the students to the questions. Often I would find a number of students making the same mistake and it enabled us to discuss the difference between the common mistake the the actual answer and the reasoning behind the work. It served a second purpose in helping me remember when I reopened the files and looked at the work. Today as I worked on this post, I could still remember the day I taught the material. These files would be invaluable if I was preparing to teach this content again next year.
Other Quick Ideas
There are so many quick ideas and tips I picked up by teaching math those few weeks.
- The cell phone camera is great for taking quick photos of the chalkboard. They can be added to a flipchart to continue work the next day.
- Word Equation Editor - This is invaluable in the math classroom for creating tests, quizzes, and worksheets.
- Upgrading to ActiveInspire 1.6.xxxx - ActivInspire now has a built-in math equation editor. I had been creating my work in Word and taking screenshots of the document to import into ActiveInspire. The built-in equation editor saved me a lot of time.
- Some students are auditory learners, others are visual learners, still others learn best by doing. The screencast can be modified to give all three groups what they need.
This is the second year in a row that my fourth grade students have created podcasts in Garageband. This year, I'm going to tie it into an Internet safety lesson.
The Project Outline
We started the project back in January. I have an outline document created in Word. The students are paired in groups of two. Depending upon the number of students in the class, I may have one group of three students.
The students open the document from the file server. They take turns being the interviewer and interviewee. Whoever is interviewing asks the questions and types the answers. By this point, the students are very good at basic word processing skills. They use proper capitalization, grammar, and spelling. They use one space between words and after punctuation marks. They understand word wrap and do not press the return at the end of lines. If we have students new to our school, this project gives them a partner to review and practice word processing skills. They switch seats and roles and complete the next interview.
When they are finished, they print a copy of the script and I review the copy for school appropriate language. I sometimes request more details.
Next Comes the Fun Part - Musical Intro
We open Garageband and learn how to open the Loop Browser. They learn to drag loops onto the time line, delete tracks, stretch and shorten loops, and delete segments of music. The program becomes a favorite piece of software for downtime when they complete projects the remainder of the year.
Recording the Script
Once all the scripts are typed and approved and the intro is complete, we get out the headphone mics to record the podcast. In this example from last year, we used the built-in microphones. There was so much background noise. This year, I was able to purchase some USB headphone mics. The Mac seems to only recognize one headset at a time. The students took turns recording questions and answers. The results are much better. I think you can hear the difference in this example. There were the same number of students in the room all recording at the same time.
Small Problems
One of my biggest disappointments in Garageband, and iMovie for that matter, is that it automatically brings up the last file in progress. This has resulted in file changes on several occassions. They were not malicious changes, students just didn't realize they were editing someone else's work and saved the changes by mistake.
As a result, when the students are finished, I come to each machine and save twice: once in the Garageband folder and a second time in the Documents folder. I name the file with the year, class, and student's names: 0809-4a-Ann-Kathy. I use the Share option to Export the Song to Disk as an MP3.
Even Out the Sound Levels
The music clips can be louder than the voices, so I've been using The Levelator to even out the sound levels. The only problem is that the file has to be a WAV or AIFF file. Zamzar comes to the rescue. I upload the file, wait for an email to tell me it's been converted, and download the WAV version of the file.
Levelator is so easy. I just drag the WAV file to the program and it generates a new file with the word "output" in the file name.
Where to Place the Files
I have chosen Podomatic to host my files. I started out with a free account. It is great, but I have decided to spend $99 to upgrade the account. It removes ads from the podcast page, gives me more storage space, and gives me detailed statistics.
Even in the free mode it is great. I copied the RSS feed for the podcast page to iTunes and the students can download their podcasts onto their iPods at home.
Tie-in to Internet Safety
One of the topics that I review each year with students is the concept of public and private information. This year, I plan to teach the lesson and then have the students review each podcast and determine how well their classmates did in keeping private information off the Internet.
I've been learning, over the course of the year, how to get podcasts together in a most expeditious and usable-for-students manner. I am not sure how practical all the steps are, but it seems to be what works best for me. Use the steps or suggest changes, I'm open to making the process more streamlined.
Garageband '08
I use Garageband since it is a very easy product for my students and I. I have taught grades four through eight how to use Garageband this year and they love it.
Once the recording is complete and I edit it for little mistakes, I am ready to export it as an AIF file. Why, you ask? Because I found a program called Levelator. It levels out the audio from one speaker to the next in a podcast.
Some students speak soft, others loud, so this evens everything out. The Levelator requires a WAV or AIF file, so this extra step becomes necessary.
LevelatorIt couldn't be a simplier program to use. Drag and drop a file onto the interface's little black rectangle and it places a new file with a .output extension in the folder with your original file.
Open the File in iTunes
I open the file in iTunes and get ready to jump through another hoop. This one involves choosing the file and selecting from the menu Advanced - Convert Selection to AAC. This gives me a .m4a file. I ran into headaches with this earlier in the year when I was creating math review podcasts for my students. Not every student could play that file type at home. So... on to the next hoop.
Upload the file to Zamzar and Convert
It seem like everyone can play .mp3 files. I use Zamzar because it is free and quick. I do use the website a fair amount, so I did make a donation to them a while back. I also received a very nice thank you email from them. I find my .m4a file on my hard drive, choose to convert to .mp3 and supply my email address. A short while later, a link appears to my new .mp3 file. It disappears in one day, so I try to complete this step when I'm not pressed for time.
Upload the File to Podomatic
I'm in the clear at this point. I started a Podomatic account earlier this year. Again, free is good. I have 500MB of storage and I'm only at about 12% capacity after a year's worth of work. I am contemplating going pro for the better statistics and ad-free page.
When I started the account, I created an RSS feed to the page. My students can access all the podcasts by typing SMS Computer at the iTunes store.
For Those Without iTunes
With the end firmly in site, I make a link to the podcasts on my classroom wiki. I have a link to the classroom wiki on my Schoolnotes page. The students are usually very good at finding the Schoolnotes page since almost every teacher keeps one for homework assignments.
So There You Have It
A lot of steps, that may seem redundant, but it is working for me. I also end up with three ways that the students can find the files.
Any thoughts?
Image Citation
Chan, Kelly. "iPod gathering." nikitac's photostream. 2005 Oct 28. 2008 June 2.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/30/56898961_fa5b5d2f30.jpg?v=0
I've come a long way since the end of the last school year. I not only learned how to use iTunes with or without an iPod, I can create podcasts. I still need to do a lot of documentation of the process.
Last weekend, I really rushed to put together a video and audio podcast for my math class. I found out the first time around that if I wanted the video podcast to download to the iPod, it had to be in MPEG-4 format.
Today, we are off from school, and I was trying to figure out why my video podcast wasn't on my iPod. When I went into iTunes to compare the files, I found out that even though I saved it in MPEG-4 format, it was using a H-264 video codec. So...I just resaved it and uploaded it to my podomatic account. Now, I have to do the final tests. It should be fine. Also, it seems like it takes 24 hours, or overnight, or something for iTunes to sync up with the RSS feed.
Live and learn.
I have finally gotten around to making a podcast with images. It's not a video podcast, per se. I also did it a little different than the first audio podcast. I only used GarageBand on the iBook to create the audio sections. I did end up saving each piece of audio for each associated image in a separate GarageBand file.
Now, my steps may be more convoluted than they need to be. I'll learn that as I go along. In GarageBand, I took each file and chose File - Export to iTunes.
I created jpg images of PowerPoint slides with <3>.
I opened iMove HD and imported images and sounds. I used the File - Share option when I was done and compressed the movie on Expert Settings. It seems like if I export as Movie to MPEG-4, I am able to see the podcast as a video podcast on my iPod.
Finally, I loaded the file up to my podomatic account. On their help screen, I found out that I could copy my RSS link to the files into iTunes. I created an iTunes account and after I submitted the RSS feed, they said they'd get back to me on the feed's entry into iTunes. I'm hoping it's a free service.
I showed my students how to access the podcast from my classblogmeister account which I have linked through my schoolnotes account.
Several hops, skips, and jumps later, I showed my math students. They seem to think it's a good idea. I'm very curious to see how many students actually use it. My first podcast was just a welcome to class. My second podcast is study notes for our first chapter quiz.
