Continuous formation

One of the things I stress when working with teachers is to have them record themselves in the classroom, either using audio or video.  It's eye-opening (and illusion-shattering) when you see yourself on the screen saying things and doing things.  It's made my practice more self-reflective in the moment -- what would I say or do if I replayed this later? We've got a new little tool that alleviates two of the problems with just putting a videocamera at the back of the room: Audio... if the camera is at the back of the room, the audio often picks up way too much noise from the students.  I realize that students are our raison d'etre, but when you're focusing on improving you and your teaching, you want to hear what you are saying (reflecting on what your students are doing is a whole other issue!) Movement... if you're doing teaching right, you're not standing in one place.  A stationary camera, even with a wide angle lens, often doesn't capture yo...

I mentioned it in yesterday's blog post and realized I hadn't discussed it before. I had done a presentation on line with Lync and although Lync does do recordings, the presentation was pretty dynamic with questions coming from the participants.  In order to make the presentation efficient for folks who couldn't attend, I used Present.Me to not only show the slides but also show me as I discussed the content. Well, it turned out that Present.Me was a big hit amongst the faculty (not like that wasn't my ulterior motive, eh?)  The Physical Education department used it in the Middle School for the student presentations on health topics almost immediately. I've found this introduction-by-stealth to be the best way of providing faculty with new ways of looking at information.  Giving them a link or even doing a video on a new application really does work... not surprisingly (thank you Dewey) actually showing them how it works in a context pushes their thinking and doi...