Well, some of us are not as good as Dan is when it comes to video. Heck, I bet 99% of us couldn’t do the things he does with video.  But why let that stop us from using video, and more importantly, coming up with ways to have our learners constructively use video in the classroom.

So, before we begin, we will need some software.  First, download Photo Story 3 from Microsoft.  You can find it here.  Say what you want about Microsoft, but this piece of software is darn good, it does exactly what it says it does, and it does it fantastically.

Next, you will need some way to get voice into the story (if you want the learners to narrate).  If you don’t want the learners to narrate, but instead you want music, then skip the next couple of paragraphs.  Photo Story 3 has built in music that will solve your problem.  You are ready to go!

Okay, I am doing math, so I need some way to narrate. …. Hmmm, I have an iPod, so I could use the iTalk.  Griffin Technology makes it, it would set us back $49.99.  But I am a teacher and cheap, so I hoof it on over to eBay and find that it will cost less than $20.00 including shipping from many sellers.  Decision made.

But if I am uber-cheap, I want to do it for free.  My laptop has a microphone built in, so isn’t there some software that would record and more?  Yes there is, and it is open source and it is called Audacity.  If you want to do sound, then you want Audacity.  I even used it in a Trig class to demonstrate sound waves, beats, constructive and destructive interference.  Audacity will do all your sound needs.  Cost = $0.

But, I don’t have my laptop with me today.  Yea, I suck.  But WAIT!  Hey, there are two other different ways to do this for free.

  and

Gabcast and Gcast both allow a person to call in using a phone (or perhaps a cell phone!  what high school learner doesn’t have one of those these days!!!) and make an mp3 recording of their voice!  This is called a podcast.  For free.  From a cell phone.  From anywhere  (I see possibilities for storytelling here).

Okay, so we have software that will take our photographs, or any jpeg files and will combine those jpegs into a video.  Along with that video, we can insert music, or, in the case of math, perhaps a learner’s slow explanation of how they did the problem. 

You see, I took my digital camera to school (not really, this is a plan for something I am going to do later) and took pictures, one after the other, of the learners doing a problem.  I just took a picture of the page using my old 2 megapixel camera, which is plenty of resolution for this, and then using Photo Story 3, chained the pictures together.  Next, I recorded a narration, and saved it.  Imported the mp3 file into Photo Story, and now I have my voice, narrating me doing a problem.

More importantly

Imagine having teams of 4 – 5 working on the problem.  In a class of 32, that is 6 to 8 teams, each trying to explain how to do a different problem.    They come up with a video explaining how to do it, post the video to YouTube, or Vimeo, and now we have 8 -  4 minute presentations on how to do the problems for a test.

I did nothing but facilitate the learning.  (hopefully).  Cost = $0.00.  Time = about an hour or less.    Isn’t this what learning should be?

So one of the biggest problems with using skills based assessment, or standards based assessment, or any of the other names that can be given to the process that Dan Meyer has been educating us on is that Alg 2 is just way to darn big.

I mean, really.  Rational functions?  Composition of functions?  If we break these down in to the smaller, little skills that are part of either of these two concepts, then we will never actually assess the larger skill that is essential.

This is a problem. H. already discovered this, and she was very willing to say so.  A couple of other people have said the same thing in the earlier comments on my blog.  Given the previous experiences, should I scrap my idea of using this for Alg 3-4 or should I forge ahead and figure out a way to do it?

I vote for forging ahead.

I already posted a Concept checklist for Alg 3-4.  It is still a rough draft, and I will be editing it and refining it. ESPECIALLY given my most recent idea.

I was introduced to “I Can” statements a couple of times this year, both in different contexts.  What I thought of doing is making the learners do “I Can” statements and then using those “I Can’s” to create assessments based on my Concept Checklists.

Yes, the learners would have to keep track of two different things. They will have to keep up on what they Can and Can’t do AND keep up with how they are doing on their Concept Assessments.  The Concept Assessments need to be linked to the “I Cans” very carefully and justified very well. If they are not justified both directions, then the reason for doing all of this work goes out the window.  The learners will see it as busy work and throw away the paper on their way out the door.

First things first.  Everything I discuss here is specific to EasyGrade Pro 4.0.  Why?  That is what our district is standardized on.  I am sure that everything can be modified to any gradebook, however.

First thing, set up the categories we will be using to grade with.

Notice that only 15 percent of the grade is due to any assignments, and it is not labeled as “homework”.  We are committed to trying to get the freshmen to work 100% of the time in class so we don’t have to assign homework.

Not sure how that is going to work out, yet.  The “Panther Math” category is a required element of our school.  Every learner does a Math Proficiency practice of some sort every day until they pass the proficiency exam.  This begins the first day of class as freshmen.  It has been showing results so far.

Notice that 70% of the grade is tests!!!  The Comprehensive exam is to make sure they are ready for our district’s CRT.  They will get 3 comprehensive exams, 1/3 of the way through, 2/3 of the way through the semester, and then the Final CRT.

Next, the way of inputting into the gradebook.

Notice the “Complete” and “Not Complete” names.  Those are how we decided to communicate the success of the learners.

So, here we have 7 fake learners.  When they demonstrate mastery on the “A” exam, they get a “COM” or complete worth 100% of the points.

The learner does not get a score in a “B” test until they passed or “Completed” the “A” exam.  Notice that Frank is doing well.  He completed objective 1, but he scored 0 out of 4 on the “B” for objective 2.

John, on the other hand, is doing poorly.  He is not even close to mastery, and his grade reflects that.  Jean has mastered 1 objective, so her grade is higher.  Shelly has mastered none, but she is trying and because of the trying has a solid C.

This system gets past the point values to the importance of COMpletion and MASTERY.  For the teacher, COM’s are good, points are indicative of remediation.  I think this will alleviate the problems H had (see her posting here.)

Okay, ladies and gentlemen.  If you have any thoughts, criticisms, suggestions, lay them on me.  We go live with this with 4 Freshman Algebra 1 teachers, at least sixteen sections of this, starting in August.

More on this will follow.

Okay, so we have some philosophy down to guide our decision making. We have some rules and procedures, a way to communicate the test questions across multiple teachers, and some basic forms so our freshman will have a consistent set of handouts and standards. 

Now all we need is some way for the teachers to know exactly what he heck we are doing and tracking the same way.  One thing to note when looking at this.  In our district Alg 1 is split into semesters, Algebra 1 and Algebra 2.  So our Alg 2 class is called Algebra 3,4. (yes, it does cause confusion when talking to people in other districts / states.)

Great, we have standards aligned with each topic, those standards are aligned with the district CRT’s, so hopefully we have all our arrows pointing in the same direction.

We spent quite a lot of time massaging this.  We are not assessing everything that could be assessed.  For instance, we are not assessing 1 step equations.  We still have to teach it, but if the learner can do 2 step and multi-step equations, then they can do 1 step equations.

What I will not post here (for obvious reasons) is our excel spreadsheet with the questions in it.   We used Microsoft Equation 3.0 to construct our problems, so they are objects that can be copied and pasted into the following file.

that we agreed to use.  Copying and pasting the problem into it gives us a very structured way to give out tests.

Finally, we agreed to a rolling 3 in class assessments. This means that every assessment will have 3 presentations to the class.  The first time will be an “A” assessment, and the second and third will be “B” assessments.  If the learner passes any of them once, the “A” assessment is complete.  They only need to do the “B” assessment for full credit.

Gradebook next!

Okay, so we sat down (five of us) and hashed out some of the mechanisms and details we will use on our assessment journey.

First, we all agreed on the principles that Dan documented. Yes, I said some bad words when I read his three principles, because he scooped me on something that he had not written about (yet) and I thought I would have something truly unique to offer.  Oh well.

Next, we got down to the nitty gritty.  How many questions on each assessment?  What constitutes mastery?  How do we decide?  Where will these questions come from?  How do we create a continuity across four different Alg 1 teachers?  What standards are we going to actually address?  Do we have to assess everything we teach?

Answers below the fold in order to conserve space.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so the lesson on reading graphs in the book was boring, I knew it and more importantly the learners knew it. So, to liven it up, I brought in my spreadsheet that I keep track of my utilities every month for my house.

In it, I have my gas therms, my KWH (Kilo Watt Hours) and water by 100’s of gallons, and then dollars per day. Four graphs, a combination of bar graph and histogram, with real data for the last 9 years of living in my house and graphs for the last seven years.

Here is one of the four graphs. I told the learners upfront that this was the data for my house, and I explained how I did it. The first asked things like, “how much time does it take to do this?” Answer is 1 minute a month, and about 5 minutes every year to start the data and set the colors for the new year.

Then we started talking about the usage graphs. What months do I use more water (summer), what months do I use more electricity (summer) what months do I use more gas (winter). Then, what months do I spend more? that graph is above. Obviously, winter. From this they determined that gas is much more expensive that water or electricity.

Was it successful? I think so. The learners definitely were into talking and asking questions about the graphs. The February water graph has a broken pipe, so there are interesting things to talk about. Would I do it again? Absolutely.

More graphs below the fold (lets see if this works!) I did lose some formatting in changing from excel to openoffice.

Read the rest of this entry »