SLAV Connects is a blog by the School Libraries Association of Victoria (SLAV), formerly named Bright Ideas when a collaboration between SLAV and the State Library of Victoria (SLV). Its aim is to share news from the Association and to encourage teacher librarians, librarians, school library staff, educators and all interested persons to actively engage with the school libraries, to share tools and experiences; to network on a global scale; and to embrace dynamic teaching and learning opportunities.
Further to the post about Mathtrain.TV a few weeks ago, another school site sharing maths screencasts has come to my attention.
Craig Mantin and Willowgrove Middle School students have created over thirty screencasts embedded in this wiki to share with audiences around the globe.
This site is useful in two ways. The first to provide a resource for students studying maths who may need further explanations on the topic. The second is to provide an exemplar of how students can demonstrate their learning of maths concepts (and media creation skills) by teaching others.
Mr Marcos and his students at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, California have developed a lovely set of screencasts to help teach maths. There is a choice of student or teacher created screencasts as well as videos with captions.
Teachers can use Mathtrain.TV in two ways. By using it in the classroom to help reinforce concepts taught (and for students to be able to revisit these topics at home) but by also having your own students create similar screencasts.
By creating these screencasts, students are not only demonstrating that they have learned the concepts behind the particular branch of mathematics, they are showing how they got to the answers. But perhaps more importantly, they are creating a product to share with others.
When creating their screencasts, they need to address:
Audience. What age level? For students good at maths or those who need extra help?
Script. They will need to write a script so that students viewing the screencasts find them easy to follow.
Visibility of sums. Will the audience be able to view the sums easily?
Layout. Will the audience be able to follow the working out?
They also need to learn how to use a tool such as the free JingProject to record their screencasts.
So students are learning lots of Web 2.0 skills, helping others as well as reinforcing their own learning. What an excellent idea!
