In my classroom, I am always on the hunt for ways to make our learning more efficient and effective. I never seem to have enough time to give the one-on-one attention that my students so desperately need. Over the last few days, I have been playing around with creating a blended learning opportunity for my 1st graders. You can see the brief outline below of how we have been doing this. There is also a short video modeling the same process.
Step 1: Screen casting
I used the app Explain Everything. We use the Everyday Math curriculum. I took screen shots from my SMARTBoard lessons that I had created. These screen shots served as a starting point for modeling the lesson for the day. I kept the videos to about 6-8 minutes.
Step 2: You Tube/Safe Share
Explain Everything allows you to upload directly to You Tube. Once uploaded, I took my You Tube URL and pasted it into SafeShare.TV This generates a link that will only play my video without all the extra clutter around.
Step 3: Kidblog
I used Kidblog to serve as a central location for my videos. This was partly because we use Kidblog in my classroom anyways, so my students are very familiar with it. I create a new post for each day's lesson. Within the post I add a link to my SafeShare linked You Tube video. I also add a link to my quiz for students to take after watching the video.
Step 4: Google Forms/Google Sites
I wanted a way to quickly check for understanding. I used Google Forms to create a quick quiz to check for understanding. However, with first graders, I needed pictures. Since Google Forms doesn't allow you to add images to your form, I did a work around. I created a Google Site to hold my quizzes. I changed the layout to 2 columns. In one column I embedded the Google Form and on the other column I inserted the pictures via a table with corresponding numbers to the question on the form.
Step 5: Flubaroo
After students had watched the video and taken the quiz, I used Flubaroo to auto correct the quiz results.
Below is a video that will visually show you all these steps in a simplified manner.
Step 1: Screen casting
I used the app Explain Everything. We use the Everyday Math curriculum. I took screen shots from my SMARTBoard lessons that I had created. These screen shots served as a starting point for modeling the lesson for the day. I kept the videos to about 6-8 minutes.
Step 2: You Tube/Safe Share
Explain Everything allows you to upload directly to You Tube. Once uploaded, I took my You Tube URL and pasted it into SafeShare.TV This generates a link that will only play my video without all the extra clutter around.
Step 3: Kidblog
I used Kidblog to serve as a central location for my videos. This was partly because we use Kidblog in my classroom anyways, so my students are very familiar with it. I create a new post for each day's lesson. Within the post I add a link to my SafeShare linked You Tube video. I also add a link to my quiz for students to take after watching the video.
Step 4: Google Forms/Google Sites
I wanted a way to quickly check for understanding. I used Google Forms to create a quick quiz to check for understanding. However, with first graders, I needed pictures. Since Google Forms doesn't allow you to add images to your form, I did a work around. I created a Google Site to hold my quizzes. I changed the layout to 2 columns. In one column I embedded the Google Form and on the other column I inserted the pictures via a table with corresponding numbers to the question on the form.
Step 5: Flubaroo
After students had watched the video and taken the quiz, I used Flubaroo to auto correct the quiz results.
Below is a video that will visually show you all these steps in a simplified manner.