technology

Students value screencasts as feedback

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon Last week, I did a little experiment: Instead of offering written feedback on my students’ essay drafts, I recorded screencasts.

It was fun and took about the same amount of time — five to eight minutes — as typing comments in Google Docs.

Here’s an example. Note: The screencast is five minutes long, but you’ll get the gist within the first minute. Don’t feel like you need to watch the whole thing. It’s not particularly scintillating! Also, the volume is a little low.

I made sure to ask my students what they thought of the screencast idea. All but two students preferred getting oral comments. They liked that I was thinking through their paper, trying to make sense of their ideas.

On the other hand, students noted that screencasts — especially short ones — cannot offer specific, targeted feedback. If my purpose is to give general comments about a paper’s focus and organization, then the screencast is perfect. If my goal is to talk grammar, it’s best to go the written route.

One of my students said, “Why don’t you do both?” Very funny. He doesn’t understand the English teacher’s paper load.

But it does get me thinking. It makes sense that I read a student’s essay three times: once for content (screencast), once for grammar (written comments), and once to grade (highlighting a rubric). When combined with a student’s peer editor and online writing mentor, that’s sufficient support in a typical two-week essay window.

Plus, the screencasts are more human. They give students the feeling that a real person — not just an English teacher — is reading their work. I think it’s a great way to communicate care. favicon

teaching

Homework: Time, not assignments?

Posted on by Mark Isero

Homeworkfavicon The homework question — how much to assign? how to encourage students to do homework? —  continues to intrigue me.

A recent blog post in The Washington Post, “The Homework Trap and What to Do About It,” by Kenneth Goldberg, offers a modest proposal to solve the homework problem.

Among the ideas: (1) Assign time-bound homework, (2) Reduce penalties for missing homework.

I agree to #1 in theory. It’s true that students work at different paces. If the goal of homework is to extend learning past class, then it makes sense to ask students to make a commitment of time rather than to demand a complete product the next day.

On the other hand, assigning time-bound homework does not sound as urgent to students. If my teacher tells me to go home and read for 30 minutes — which I did last year — will I actually do it? In other words, would more or less homework get done? I’m going to ask my students, as a hypothetical, about time-bound homework and what effect it would have on their habits.

As for #2, I also agree in theory. It makes sense that homework factors in as a modest part of a student’s grade. But I also know that if my students weren’t doing significant homework, they’d be writing their eighth essay next week, not their 16th. We’d be on our fifth novel of the year, not our 10th. Sure, a class is rigorous and memorable not because of the number of assignments that students complete. But the fact remains that, in any college-prep class, homework is a big part.

The other problem with reducing penalties for missing homework is that even more students would miss homework. There is no flow to a class when 25 individuals arrive to class in 25 different places. The secret to a successful class is to build a unified story, a sense of a common experience.

The answer to the homework problem, then, is not whether to assign more or less — or whether to assign time vs. completed products. I think the most important thing is to make sure that homework is a meaningful, critical piece of my curriculum — that it’s valued by students. It’s also crucial to monitor homework completion so that it never falls below 70 percent. If it goes lower, then it’s time to rethink and regroup.

What do you think about Goldberg’s ideas for homework? favicon

technology

Kikutext helps teachers stay in contact with parents

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon As teachers, we understand the importance of building relationships with our students’ parents and staying in constant communication with them.

Except it’s not easy to do it. Other things — like planning lessons, grading papers, and sleeping — get in the way. Even though talking with parents is one of the most important and effective ways to help students, it’s often the first thing to go.

That’s why I like texting, and that’s why I like Kikutext.

Most of my students’ parents welcome texting. I text them, and they text me back. It’s quicker and more convenient than a phone call.

But there are a few problems: (1) That’s a lot of contacts to organize, (2) What if I want to send a group text to all my students’ parents? (3) What if they (or I) don’t want to share my personal phone number?

Kikutext takes care of all those problems.

You sign up for free and get a Kikutext phone number. Parents can sign up by sending a text to that number, or you can invite parents individually. After everything is set up, you can send texts to parents individually or collectively. Parents can also text you back. You manage all your messages online at the Kikutext website. It’s pretty easy.

In addition to being free, Kikutext separates itself from its competitors (among them: Class Parrot, Class Pager, SendHub, WeTxt, and others) by offering a wonderful feature called “Status Reports.”

This one is huge. Status Reports allow you to send automated yet personalized messages to individual parents. Let’s say you’re in class, and two students are absent, three didn’t complete their homework, and Sally made an excellent point in discussion. From one screen, you can send different texts to different parents, all at the same time. Even better, you can modify the choices and personalize the texts. This is a feature no other service currently has.

In short: You could easily contact all of your students’ parents every day (meaning: it would take three minutes, tops). (Just be sure that your parents aren’t annoyed by the constant communication!)

When I text students, I still prefer SmashText. It’s a free desktop application that allows group and mass texting using your Google contacts. When students respond, their texts go directly to my phone (although I could change that setting in Google Voice). I find that I like the real-time interactive nature of SmashText. After all, students can’t wait; they need their answers now.

But with parents, I’m definitely going with Kikutext next year. The developers are working hard to make improvements, and I look forward to seeing what they do over the summer.

Important Update, August 2012: Much of this review is no longer accurate. Kikutext now offers tiered pricing, and its free option is too restrictive to be workable. Its pro service is $10 a month, too expensive for most teachers. In addition, the “status reports,” as far as I know, are no longer available. Therefore, although I understand that Kikutext needs to make money, I no longer think it’s a good solution. I’m staying with SmashText. favicon

teaching

Staying focused after Spring Break

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon It’s after Spring Break. For the seniors I teach, this means graduation is in sight. They’ve received admission (or rejection) from college. There’s a bit of an anticlimax in the air. They’re counting down the days.

As a teacher, this is probably the hardest time of the year. The AP exam is coming up on May 10, and my students can do well if they prepare. But motivating them to work hard is not easy right now.

Meanwhile, I’m concerned about the seniors who might not graduate. Four years ago, I lost an advisee just three weeks before graduation. All of a sudden, she stopped coming to school. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get her back. It affected me deeply.

Self-sabotage is a powerful force. Sometimes, success is as scary as failure. And I’m not talking about students. As teachers, it’s easy at the end of the year to disengage, to start looking to August. It’s easy to say, “I’ve taken my students this far. It’s time that they take care of themselves. After all, they’re graduating, and they won’t have me in the real world.”

It’s easy to say this, but it’s also retreating and making excuses. The truth is, My students need me more now than ever before. Therefore, instead of disengaging, it’s important that I stay focused on helping my students cross the stage on June 2 and have a concrete plan for their future.

If I don’t succeed, at least I know I did my best. And I won’t have any regrets if something goes wrong. Yes, what’s coming up is an end. It’s important that I do things the right way. favicon

teaching

Responding to student work with screencasts

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon I just finished up an experiment. With the first drafts of my students’ essays, instead of writing comments in Google Docs, I recorded screencasts to offer spoken rather than written feedback.

This is not a new idea. I’ve done it before here and there, and so have others (Shelly Blake-Plock’s post is excellent), but I’ve never done screencasts with an entire class before.

Until today.

So here’s how it went: I used Jing, a free screencasting program that allows you to record your computer’s screen and your voice for up to five minutes. Once you’ve done that, you can save your screencast to your computer or post it (with a URL) to screencast.com. It’s pretty simple.

So instead of reading my students’ essays and then giving written comments in the margins, I talked through the essays like a live AP English reader would. In other works, I did a “think aloud.”

I’m not going to post any examples here yet — until I get my students’ permission and their feedback about this process — but my initial hope is that these screencasts will approximate a virtual (one-way) writing conference. I’m wondering if hearing a person’s voice (instead of reading a person’s comments) will spur more students to deeper revision.

Many time-crunched teachers will ask, “Doesn’t this take forever?” Actually, not really. You can record up to five minutes, but my screencasts averaged about three. Then it takes about a minute to upload to screencast.com, during which time I take a much-needed break to refresh my head and surf the web. Once the uploading is finished, I copy and paste the link to the student’s writing review template on the bottom of the essay. Overall, then, the process takes about five minutes per essay, which isn’t horrific.

No, you can’t offer line-by-line commentary. You can’t get into the nitty-gritty of word choice or syntax. These screencasts are good for the big stuff — overall focus, thesis, organization, quality of evidence. They’re great to give students a holistic assessment of their work in the formative stage.

Please let me know what you think of this experiment. It’s entirely possible that it’ll be a failure, but I’m hopeful that it will give my students more of a “live” version of how readers try to understand their writing.

I’ll be sure to post an update after I get my students’ reactions. favicon