Experiments with Flipping the Classroom

LIVESCRIBE ECHO PEN

After attending a ProGro Workshop on flipping the classroom, I became interested in trying to create  my own audio visual content for learning. The tool that got my attention was something called the Livescribe Echo Pen. It recorded what you wrote on a piece of paper into an animation, as well as recording the audio at the same time. It also kept everything in sync, so that you could jump around the recording to any place you wanted to go.  I was lucky enough to be able to get hold of one second hand from the Amazon Marketplace for +- R900. It took a while to get used to teaching to only a page, but I definitely learnt a a lot going through the process. Here is one of my first attempts – trying to explain the quadrilateral family of shapes.
Although I could accomplish my task of creating audio visual content for my learners. A lot of them seemed to struggle to get the correct version of  Adobe Reader on their devices to properly see the animated drawings.  There was also no way to upload the content to YouTube which was  limiting. In the end whilst some learners enjoyed my videos, they weren’t easy enough to consume to warrant the effort. Also they were probably still a bit long.  So after several experiments I decided this wasn’t the tool for me and continued my search for the right workflow elsewhere.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finding Academic Information Efficiently

Image
  Intro Here are a collection of links that give great advice on how to track down academic information efficiently over time. It could be particularly helpful for postgraduate students who are finding the accessing and sorting of academic information overwhelming. https://paperpile.com/g/academic-search-engines /  https://paperpile.com/guides/research / https://paperpile.com/guides/writing/   https://paperpile.com/g/search-online-research-database/   https://paperpile.com/g/academic-research-databases/   https://paperpile.com/g/google-scholar-guide /  https://paperpile.com/g/search-online-research-database /  https://paperpile.com/g/eric-research-database/   https://paperpile.com/g/what-is-research-paper/   https://guides.library.ucla.edu/databases/choosing  
Read more

Using Mathematics to Help Buy a Car in the South African Context (Part 2)

Image
Image Credit Follow on  In the previous post ( link to part 1 )  I discussed the basic mathematical  ideas to have in mind when thinking about purchasing a car. I had decided I would look at cars in the range of 80 - 100 000 rand and I wanted to buy a used car because of the better value offered. The videos in post 1, suggest cars around the range of 2 - 4 years old, as they offer the best trade off between future maintenance costs and depreciation on the purchase price after you have bought it. I agree with the facts laid out and will probably look for something in the 3 to 4 year old range. However I still need to check to see if the same patterns on maintenance costs and depreciation are also true in the South African context.  This points to our next step in our search. How do we get accurate information relevant to the SA context to see if these ideas mentioned are true and so allow me to get closer to my ultimate goal, buying a car. I am going to start with an ...
Read more

A little bit about OneNote for Maths Teachers

Image
Intro Over the last year or so I have increasingly been using Microsoft OneNote to author my maths lessons. I think a lot of maths teachers would benefit from having a closer look at the tool as it has a lot features that lessen the amount of work a maths teacher has to do when preparing lessons. It is also very easy to work with, when collaborating with other maths teachers because of the native sharing functions it has. Some Useful Links  These are a collection of links I saved to help with common problems I had when starting to use OneNote as Maths Teacher.  My Online Notebooks URL   (link to the online version) Export and Import Copies of OneNote Notebooks  Import Whole Notebooks into OneNote Online URL Great OneNote Youtube Tutoria l for Maths Teachers  Summary I plan to return to this post in future and update it as I continue using OneNote in my Mathematics Teaching in 2022. 
Read more