Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
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Video deja vu (I)
In late 2000, we started a project that involved working extensively with digital video, featuring multiple languages, multiple (ok, two) synchronized video, and transcripts. We learned how to get such video onto computers, do light editing, compress it into formats tractable with then-current computer technology.
Right now, one of the decisions is problematic in hindsight. This was using the RealVideo format, primarily because it worked well with the SMIL markup language. That format hasn’t aged well, and in particular isn’t supported well in the Macintosh world.
Recently, we’ve begun a new video-based project, with the opportunity to make new decisions about equipment, formats, etc. The next posting will discuss the decisions we’ve made, and we’ll see if we’ve learned anything from this experience…
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Recording classrooms revisited and revised — Part I: equipment
As part of our new project, we’re refreshing our equipment and revisiting decisions made at the turn of the millennium. Some of that information has been preserved by Sujai Kumar here. So far, we’ve decided to:
1. Use the
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FCanon-AVCHD-Definition-Camcorder-Optical%2Fdp%2FB000U8HBRW%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Delectronics%26qid%3D1198007997%26sr%3D8-1&tag=timelysnow02-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Canon HG-10 </a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=timelysnow02-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />, which is a high definition hard-disk based camcorder that uses the AVHCD format.2. Use the
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FRODE-VideoMic-Directional-Camcorder-Microphone%2Fdp%2FB0007U9SOC%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusical-instruments%26qid%3D1198014539%26sr%3D8-1&tag=timelysnow02-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Rode Videomic</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=timelysnow02-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />as a boom mike, which is more elegant and easier to assemble than what we’d used before.3. Adopt the Sennheiser Evolution system for recording sound. We have some but not enough expensive Lectrosonics transmitters/receivers from the last round. The ones we had are discontinued and their new ones are still about twice the prices of the Sennheiser ones. I’m surprised the prices haven’t dropped more than they have. actually.
All of these models use UHF frequencies, which can be interfered with by TV signals. Sennheisers come in A, B, or C sets, and it looks like from their website there’s the least interference around Detroit on the “C” band. Anyway, it ended up being cheaper to get new sets of their “Evolution” system instead of adding to what we had. I was able to get a good price on these from Road Dog Electronics...we’ll see how it works out.
...more later…
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Reading Rockets : Ten Myths About Learning to Read
Reading Rockets : Ten Myths About Learning to Read
Nice summary, based largely on Phil Gough’s ideas (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I’d probably quibble a bit with #7 and #8, but to a first approximation and for instructional purposes, a useful summary of some important myths about reading.
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Motivation Class 2
Yesterday we had our second class on motivation. I showed an old video from the Internet Archive – Maintaining Classroom Discipline from 1947. I thought there was a pretty good discussion of issues related to discipline and motivation, although it also brought up a very interesting concept alien to my own experience as a student. That is the notion of teachers respecting or disrepecting their students. It’s a complex issue, because I would argue that the deepest respect an instructor can show his/her students is to expect that they can attain high levels of performance and point out to them when they fail to do so. But I don’t think that construal really fits the way students tend to think of this term.
In the video, “Mr. Grimes” is caught in a mutually frustrating punitive cycle with his students. Then an alternative approach to the initial problem (the students performing very badly on an exam) is shown, in which the students’ reactions are acknowledged and they are set on a fairly clear path to learning what they didn’t understand.
I think that the key issue with motivation in the classroom is finding ways to interrupt a cycle in which students infer that they’re going to be successful or unsuccessful in advance of and independent of trying to learn something. It’s easy for assessment and teaching processes to play into those beliefs, because American schools do have a great variation in student performance (so some students probably already know whatever is being taught). To the extent that that knowledge seems like magic, it will prove to discourage those who don’t have it, with baleful effects that may be well-established by the time students enter high school.
The week after next, Eva Pomerantz will be talking about exactly these issues, although I suspect my students will be out in their field placements and have to miss it.
I’d be very interested in feedback on the class discussion—I’m still not very good at leading those, but I thought the class discussion yesterday was useful and interesting. -
Aims of education
Today we had our second class, which included a syllabus review (postponed from first class so students could read it first), a discussion of the aims of education and how assessment figures into determining what is taught as well as what as been learned. We use a revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives to talk about how one can measure what students know/have learned. It’s a useful framework, and this semester we’re going to have students use that framework to write exam questions based on the material covered in the first half of the course. So they should learn it fairly well, and I think it will be something that they use in their careers.
When I first taught this course last year, I was surprised to see that there was no exam. In the past there had been one, but it had someone gone away in the belief that an examination was not “authentic” compared to having the students write about how they’d apply to teaching what they’re learning about. I think that’s a fair point. On the other hand, assessment is so central to teaching and learning that it’s important for students to take it on as deeply as possible while they’re training to become teachers. That can include confronting the anxiety that their students will face, and it certainly should involve looking at both sides of writing and taking exam questions. At least I hope so.
The tactic we came up with was to develop what we’re calling an “open source exam,” Students will write a total of 4 exam questions, two short-answer and two multiple-choice or similar format and will write questions that vary across the components of Bloom’s taxonomy. They will also critique each others’ exam questions. Then we will produce an exam comprised of items selected from the pool of questions generated across all the sections (there should be ~600 items in the pool), all of which will be available to them.
This is a bit of a high-risk activity, because we’re trusting that students will be able to generate a pool of high-quality questions. I think the gamble is worthwhile, because the payoff will be a) better knowledge of the educational psychology material, b) sophistication in writing test items and answers, and experience in thinking through the range of ways one can assess learning.
I’ll post a discussion of how it all goes.
In some ways, the high point of today’s class ended up being the discussion of the syllabus. The students have had a semester’s worth of classes together and so know each other well. There were good comments and questions about the value of this course and why it’s set up the way it is. Should be an interesting semester.
I didn’t think I did a particularly good job of going through the broader aims of education part of the class, perhaps because it’s too abstract a concept to explore in just a few minutes. We also worked through a transcript of a U.S. math class (that we’ll watch again in a different context) to look at the kind of assessment that occurs in the course of ordinary classroom discourse. I think that would work better with a contrasting case to compare it to. Instead, we pushed on to try to generate some questions from a reading passage used on the MEAP. I thought that was important as a bridge toward the question-writing they’ll be doing this semester. Next time I think I’d just focus on classroom discourse and have them compare the math video with an example from a class with a different questioning style.
Finally, I announced the existence and location of this weblog in class, so I’m hoping to see some comments from my students. It’s always hard to generate the kind of specific information you need to improve a class; this might be a way to gather that.
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Five-minute university
In class today I used the Don Novello/Father Guido Sarducci 5 minute university clip, which was both apt and very clever. I need to try to find the original to make a larger, better copy for next time…
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Brain age
Nintendo.com Games : Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day
I’m not sure what this contains, other than Sudoku. The Michigan Daily publishes a relatively easy Sudoku puzzle every day, and I’ve been surprised at the number of people I see doing it. I’ve been playing around with Web Sudoku, which contains a timer and gives you statistics on your performance. Initially the fact that it was taking me so long to do the medium puzzles was motivating; now I can do them fairly quickly, but it’s interesting to use it as a measure of my mood or attentiveness, valid as it may or may not be.
What I don’t know is whether this has anything at all to do with mathematics.
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Mathematical joke of the day
For some reason, I found this very funny. The weblog itself also seems very interesting, written by a school mathematics textbook developer.
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Wikis and Blogs
In a few weeks I’m supposed to give a talk about the use of wikis and weblogs in teaching and research. Which would be easier if I knew more about them. This tool will certainly be used in what I do, though, so I’m storing the link here:
Jon Udell: Visualizing change
This is wildly cool stuff. But I’m not just trying to highlight
Wikipedia’s collaborative revisioning or showcase another cool
Greasemonkey hack. There is a larger theme. In the realm of content as
in the realm of software—two domains that seem determined to merge—everything is changing all the time. We will increasingly require,
and come to depend on, tools that help us visualize and manage the
flux. -
Word of the day
I’m at a conference sponsored by NSF on setting standards for videography in educational research. A term ubiquitous here but new to me is “boundary object”—see discussion here
Useful concept; I don’t know why I never came across it before.