Before I get to my evaluation, I wanted to share my first attempt at giving feedback using Jing. As part of our paper swap, Shawn and I utilized screencasting to provide each other with feedback on our TechQuests. Click the image below to view my critique of her work:
It was great to finally implement part of my TechQuest. Although it wasn’t on student work, I believe the premise is the same. I really learned a lot by receiving Shawn’s feedback in this manner as well. Namely, teachers will need to be taught how to create their screencasts.
I experienced this as well. How a teacher would normally speak to a student in a one-on-one conference will not translate well to screencasted feedback. The ‘umms’, ‘ahhs’, and pregnant pauses are no no’s. However, it would also be ineffective to script a screencast. So really, a big challenge of mine going forward will be iron out a technique that best integrates screencasting into the grading/review process. I realize that many of my issues can be better addressed once I’m able to implement it in an authentic situation but it never hurts to think ahead.
What stinks about how I created Shawn’s feedback is that she can only listen and watch me interact with her paper. Especially in a format like Google Docs or Word, it may be more effective to use the comment feature to directly tag specific areas of the document. This way, changes could be made immediately rather than watching/listening to the screencast and then making a whole batch of changes later. This would ensure that all areas of concern are addressed individually rather than being buried amongst others.
Most likely this could save time on the teacher’s end as well. Why mention grammatical mistakes in a screencast with it would be much more effective to just put in a comment tag saying “consider revising” or something more specific to the situation. When communicating a more complex idea, the teacher could create a short screencast and then link the student to it via a link in a comment tag. I believe this would better help the student because it’s directly connected to their actual document.
Establishing this process will have obvious growing pains initially because I plan to implement the feedback loops as soon as I get back to the classroom. It needs to be implemented from day one to have the most effect and this will be overwhelming. Personally, I foresee having an urge to downscale or even do away with providing feedback via screencast if I get frustrated with the amount of time I’m spending on it. For the sake of the project, it will be critical to continue to innovate rather than give in.
In the future, I think I’ll approach my TechQuest’s from the viewpoint that I will never quite finish them. Much like all things in education, my TechQuest will need to be constantly revised in order for it to continue to be advantageous to myself and my students. Therefore, when selecting a future TechQuest it will be important to pick serious on-going problems of practice.
Getting help and advice from peers/colleagues is invaluable as well. My SIG group members offered perspectives that made my project better, and hopefully more adaptable from teacher to teacher. Replication is a very important part of lesson planning to me. So in the future I will want to keep in mind that I’m not only designing strategies like this one for myself, but for my colleagues as well.
3 comments:
I agree, there may come a time where you might have to change conferencing strategy - dropping screencasting for a more time-efficient one. The blended screencast/Google doc option you mentioned would be a wonderful alternative - the best of both worlds. Have you considered blogs or wikis? A Spanish teacher I know, has her students post their written work to Wikispaces. She then goes in and comments on their work. One of the benefits of using wikis, according to her, is that she can see when/it the student went in and edited their own work, as well as when it was done (read: late assignment). Wiki history can be very telling.
Thanks for sharing your ideas as well as making this resources a little more familiar for us Jeff. Replication is so valuable for others like us ! Your reflection is really realistic;about going back to revise it often. You sound a bit discouraged though...remember all of the learning you have done through the process even though your ending wasn't necessarily what you had hoped for. I'm sure your confidence has increased with using collborative technologies as well as your mind is still ticking about how to solve this feedback issue. I'm sure you will come up with a solution soon enough with determination like yours !
Jeff-
I am inspired by your screencasting idea to comment on students' work, even though there are some drawbacks. I hear you on the constant revision for your TechQuest. I had to revise mine several times. I think that is just fine though. It's good to improve upon something rather than going through the project and never realizing something needs to be changed. Good luck in the future when using screencasting in the classroom!
-Katy
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