Video in the Classroom

I think that video has a lot of value in the classroom.  It is a visual way for students to learn about many different subjects.  As we have learned in many of our methods classes, no student learns the same way.  Some are visual learners, while others learn through audio and still others learn kinesthetically or tacitly.  Video is a good source of information for visual and audio learners.  Watching a video is also much more fun and interesting than reading about a topic in a textbook.  Teachers can introduce video clips into their lessons on any subject.   For example, during a science lesson the teacher could have the students watch and Magic School Bus or Bill Nye video.  These are two examples of fun ways to learn about science.  There are also many historical videos that could be introduced.  Watching one of these videos, I believe would be much more interesting than reading about it in a textbook or listening to the teacher lecture about the topic.  Also, a video could be used to introduce a lesson.  For example, after watching a Magic School Bus video on a topic such as electricity or plants, the students could then conduct their own experiment.  This would be a good hands-on approach for the students to learn more about the subject.  And because they have already watched the video they will already have the background knowledge.  This is also a helpful way to get kinesthetic and tactile learners involved. 

This is one example as to how I would incorporate video into my curriculum. One specific example I would incorporate is watching the Magic School Bus Gets Planted and then have the students do an experiment to determine how plants get food.  

In this video Phoebe tries to grow a vine for the school play, 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' but her plant is more like a beansprout than a beanstalk! With the opening curtain of the play only minutes away, Ms. Frizzle turns Phoebe into a real plant. But Phoebe finds she doesn't know how to grow. With time running out, the bus and kids shrink and travel into a nearby plant to do research. They discover that its leaves are its own private food factory. With this information, the kids rush back to help Phoebe grow into the star of the show!

Experiment:

The students will be broken up into small groups of 2-4 students.  Each group will need:

• Sunny window
• Water
• 2 lima bean seeds
• Soil
• Plastic cup (punch hole in bottom)
• Saucer
• Lidded box
• Cardboard for dividers
• Tape
• Scissors
• Ruler

The class and I will then talk about how plants get food and what they need to grow. I would ask: Where do you get energy to grow, run, live? (food) Where do plants get energy? (also from food) Where do plats get food? (They make it from air, water, sunlight.) What would you do to get food if you were hungry? What might a plant do? 

The groups will then perform the experiment by following the steps listed below, with my assistance: 

1. To speed sprouting, soak seeds in water overnight. 
2. Help kids plant seeds at a depth about twice the length of the seed. Water well. (If both seeds sprout, pinch one out.) 
3. Build a maze in the lidded box by using cardboard for the dividers. Cut a hole at the top end of the box.
4. Discuss experiment controls. Ask: What should we do to compare how plants grow in a maze with how plants grow outside a maze? (Grow control plant outside maze.) Plant and water seeds for the control.
5. Put the mazes and control plant in a sunny window. Open the mazes only briefly every few days to observe and water.

After the students have completed this experiment, observed and discussed, the class can discuss what makes plants green: Plants make food in chloroplasts, tiny green organs mostly in leaves. What happens to chloroplasts kept in the dark?  The students can sandwich a leaf of a hardy plant like philodendron or geranium with black paper taped together. Remove paper after a week. What has happened? (The green pigment is gone.)

I would then discuss what the class observed.  The outcome of this experiment should be that the students have learned that plants need air, water and sunlight in order to grow.  Sunlight is also what makes plants green.  Without it there is no green pigment.  

Some challenges that I might encounter in this project are problems with plants not growing.  If the plants do not grow, the students will not be able to observe properly.  This is likely problem because not all plants will grow the same.  (Some may grow at a faster rate).  I believe, however, that this is a good experiment to involve all students.  The students will get to plant their own plants, watch them grow and observe what they have seen.  I will discuss the outcome with all of my students at the end of the experiment to make sure that all of them are involved and understand.  That way there is not one student in the group doing all of the work.  


This activity, I believe, will peak the interest of most students and be a fun, hands-on way for students to learn about plants.  The use of video in this lesson will help enhance the students learning and give them background knowledge on the concept we will be studying.  


I believe that video is a helpful tool in the classroom.  It should not be used just as a time filler or strictly to teach a lesson, but should be used along with a planned lesson to help the students better understand the topic and make learning more fun.

This lesson plan idea came from Scholastic Teachers:  http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=1659

Video Project

Working on the video project was a lot of fun and a great learning experience.  I enjoyed learning how to use Movie Maker and Audacity.  This software could be very useful in the classroom.  Making the video was easy.  It took a little while to get used to how to use the camera, but once we got the hang of it, it was simple.  We had to re-shoot a few scenes but only because after watching what we had filmed we decided that we should zoom in further or do something a little differently.  After filming we uploaded the footage to the computer and opened it in Movie Maker.  Movie Maker is really easy to use and make editing video simple.  This was the most difficult part of the process, however.  It was not hard, but it was quite time consuming.  It took us a little while to get the hang of editing the clips, and figuring out exactly what scene we wanted to use.  It also took quite a bit of time shortening out video.  After editing the scenes we realized some of them were too long so we had to go back a few times to edit them down.  After we got the clips edited and where we wanted them, the rest was simple.  We put in transitions and effects to make the video flow better and then we found music to go along with it.  This took a little time as well.  Finding music that fit what we wanted to portray in our video took a little bit of time, but after we found it it was easy import into our video.

While making this video was simple and easy, we did have a little bit of difficulty at one point.  We saved our unfinished video on my USB drive and continued to work on it a few days later.  However, when we pulled the video off of my USB the video content was not showing up.  We were nervous that we would have to redo the entire thing, but we got the video back with a little help and completed the video.

Overall, this project was a lot of fun to do.  Not only are the videos educational, they are easy to make.  Knowing how to film and edit videos will also come in handy when teaching, I believe.  This would be a fun project to do with my students.  It is a fun way to learn!

Week 6 - EDUCAUSE Text Chapter 7

I was surprised by some of the findings in this study.  For example, students responded by saying that they used internet technology more for school work than for communication.  While I use the internet for research and presentations, I also use it to communicate with people from home and in other parts of the country.  I thought more students would have said that they use technology for communication.  I was also surprised at the amount of the "net geners" that prefered limited or no use of technolgy in the classroom.  I would have thought that with the use of technology today, students would prefer their professors to use more technology in the classroom.  It is also shocking that so many people thought that the only benefit to technology in the classroom was that it was convienent.  In my opinion technology saves time and helps organize information better.  With the amount of people who own computers and have internet access, I would think that they would learn better through visual lessons, rather than sitting and listening to the professor lecture.  The internet can introduce videos and other interactive resources into the classroom that I believe would make learning a lot more fun than the "talking head." Most of the other information in the text was as I expected. For example, the amount of seniors that reported owning a a computer and using technology was higher than the amount of freshman.  I also expected that boys would report playing more video games than girls, especially the younger boys.  I also expected that boys would report a higher skill level than girls when it came to technology use.  Based upon this information, there are some aspects of this study that I expected and others that surprised me. 
If I were to give a survey to my students I would ask them how many hours a week they spend on the computer. I would also ask them what they use the computer for (i.e. communication, games, research/school work, etc.)  I would also ask them if they would like more technology in the classroom and perhaps what type of technology they would like to see in the class.  I would also ask them what they thought the impact of technology was on different activities in the classroom.  These are some examples of what questions I would ask if I gave a technology survey to my students. 

Week 6 - Copyright

From reading about copyright this week, I learned a lot about what teachers can and cannot do.  What surprised me was that teachers should not copy a page out of a text book or workbook.  So many of my teachers give out handouts of photocopied pages, and I never thought anything of it.  However, after completeing the readings and watching the assigned videos I learned that teachers should not do this.  It is, as I understand it, considered fair use if the teacher photocopied it for one use and just did not have time to ask permission to use the material.  As long as the teacher does not continue to use this material year after year, without permission, she is not violating copyright. 
As stated above, I have seen many teachers and professors copy material from books and use it in the classroom.  I do not know, however, if they got permission or whehter they used the material in future years.  If they did then they were violoating copyright.
Outside of school, on the other hand, I have known people who download music from the internet and share it with other people. 
I believe that it is my job to teach copyright respect to my students.  I will teach them this by explaining to them what copyright is and what they can and cannot do with copyrighted materials.  I will explain fair use and what public domain is.  Playing copyright jeopardy, like we did in class, would be a fun way for the students to learn about copyright, as well. 

Week 4 - Google Docs versus Microsoft Word

If my school district were thinking about switching from Microsoft to Google Docs and the Principal was looking for input, I would pick sticking with Microsoft.  I personally find Microsoft easier to use.  I also believe that there are more features in Microsoft Office that are useful in the classroom.
Most people are familiar with Microsoft and know how to use the basic features.  However, if you wanted students to create a presentation, write a paper or record data in a spreadsheet, the teacher could teach the students how to use some of the other features offered. 
While Google Docs has the share feature and does not require students to attach documents to an email before sharing with the teacher, I believe that Microsoft is easier to use.  It is simpler to format and make tables, as well as offers features such as word art and clip art that students could use for different activities.
I also believe that excel allows students to make more attractive graphs and has more features to make imputing, recording, and reading data simpler.
Microsoft PowerPoint also has many simple features to make presentations.  It also allows you to record which makes for a more interactive and fun presentation. 
For these reasons I would stick with Microsoft Office and not switch to Google Docs.

Week 4 - Using Excel in the Classroom

5 Ways of incorporating excel into classroom curriculum:

1) Excel could be incorporated into the social studies curriculum.  For example, when learning about different battles, students could use a spreadsheet to chart the battles, including where and when they occurred.  This would be a good study technique, for example.  It may help students organize information better and help them remember important dates and events in History. Students could also use graphs to determine how many battles, including percentage, occurred in each state etc.  Spreadsheets could also be used to to record timelines.
2) Excel could be incorporated into math, as well.  One example would be when learning about probability.  For example, students could be broken up into groups and toss a coin to determine the probability of getting heads versus tails.  The data could be recorded in a spreadsheet and formulas could be used to figure out the average, etc.  Graphs could also be used to show a visual image of the percentages. 
3) Another math lesson that could incorporate excel is when learning about area.  Excel would allow the students to see a shape and figure out the area by using the cells.  Each cell could equal one unit.  The students would have to count the cells in the shapes to determine the area.  Students could also create their own shapes with a pre-determined area.  This would be a good exercise for students to practice what they know about area.
4) Excel could also be incorporated into science curriculum.  For example, when learning about global warming, students could graph the data and predict future trends.  Excel spreadsheets could also be used to chart the effect of earthquakes.  Spreadsheets would give students a better understanding of how these concepts work, as well as give them a visual to based the information on.
5)  As for language arts, students could use excel spreadsheets to examine things such as character traits.  Students could list the characters and the traits they posses and compare and contrast the data. 

These activities are some examples I would present.  They offer ideas on how to incorporate excel into each content area.  I believe they are a good starting point and would give other teachers ideas on how to incorporate Excel into their classroom.

Week 3 - Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking allows you to save websites that you use often, or that contain valuable and relevent information that you may need to access in the future.  It makes finding these websites easy.  Social bookmarking is also public so it allows you to find the websites from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection.  Because it is public other people can also look at you websites.  The websites are organized by tags, or key words.  These tags help you, and otheres, find specific websites or topics.  Regular booking marking is helpful, however; bookmarking only saves the website to one computer.  Therefore, it is not as easy to access.  In my opinion, social bookmarking is a useful tool to help organize and share information. 
As a student I could use social bookmarking to share websites with my friends.  I could also use it to save important websites for a project or assignment.  As a teacher social boomarking would be useful to share my websites with other teachers.  I can also access other teachers' websites and gain more knowledge about a particular subject, as well as find useful and relevant information for my classroom.  Also, some people may find websites that I may not, so by using common tags I could gain access to this information.  Not only could I share my websites with other teachers, but I could also share them with my students.  If my class has a project to do I could give them the web address to my social bookmarking site and they could search through my tags to find helpful and reliable websites for their assignment.  Overall, from what we have read and discussed, social bookmarking seems like a very useful and simple tool.  It is helpful now that I am a student and it will continue to be helpful when I am a teacher.