Video Lectures to Assist Students During Workshop


I have finally begun a video lecture series that my students can reference as they write, work, and study.

I attended Andrew Easton’s (@EastonA1) 2017 NCTE session on “Genre Exploration through Immersive Game Units.” At the time, I was gamifying my classroom and his presentation was inspiring. However, the piece I most connected with was short video-recorded lessons to help in personalized learning. I knew I at least needed to have video lessons for students to refer back to. Also in the past two years, I read Catlin Tucker’s (@Catlin_Tucker) blog posts on station rotation models. This post explores the “in-class flip.”

It was only earlier this school year that I began recording mini video lectures. Andrew suggested keeping videos to five minutes or less. To capitalize on the rhyme, I decided on “Mr. E in 3” (minutes) as my video series name.

I did not do any editing or any real tech work. I pulled up the notes and organizers I utilize in class and delivered my mini-lectures. Thus, they were not scripted—though that may work better, I wanted to get them out. My thought was that something was better than nothing. You can see a sample mini-less on semi-colons below:

The others are available from the same channel. I decided to just go for it and post them.

MY PROCESS:
·       Pull up a PDF or Word document of the notes I presented in class.
·       Use Screencastify to record.
·       Upload the videos to Google Drive, then download them.
·       Upload the videos to YouTube.
·       Post the video links in Google Classroom.

VIDEO-LECTURES IN ACTION:
Now, when we are in workshop, students have a resource to turn to for basic questions. This clears me (and my co-teacher in our co-taught sections) to work with students on deeper thinking or style and structure. Students will be less likely to need me to re-teach a concept—beyond their notes and our class examples, they also have access to my lecture again.

FUTURE IDEAS:
·       I would like to add some type of intro: whether I edit or at least say, “Welcome to Mr. E in 3!”
·       I want to get more consistent in my formatting—brief lecture and then follow up with how we talk about or analyze the concepts.
·       Remembering that I can divide one lecture into two smaller ones is helpful (as I did with propaganda technique review). I had not originally considered that option. However, two three-minute videos for a topic is not overwhelming and can also help with more focused review of one particular element of a concept.

This has been another of the many changes I’ve been making to my instruction. So many alterations (standards-based assessment, workshopping, modeling, work habits, community circles) is beginning to feel overwhelming, but I’m trying to take each aspect one step at a time.

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