misterteacher.com: Teaching with (Digital) Video Part 2

In my last post I introduced the concept of using (digital) video to enhance teaching and learning in the mathematics classroom. This post is a follow-up and will describe curriculum integration strategies for video, ideas from my classroom, and list some other uses of video in the classroom. Finally, check the list of links in the following posts for further information on video in the classroom.

Curriculum Integration Ideas -

Digital Video Editing -

A Day with Fractions - From the Apple Education Website, this video, actually a collection of still shots, was created by second graders from California. The video allowed the students to demonstrate an understanding of fractions and time concepts learned in class. As you watch it, think about how through making the video the teacher has given students the opportunity to see fractions in the real world. You can also see how they are connecting fractions to related concepts, such as percents. So how do you utilize digital movie making in the classroom?

As a form of assessment--using it to evaluate student knowledge of concepts like fractions?
To enhance student learning?
Or as part of an entire unit, a unit in which the video was completed over a long period, with scenes added as students learned more about the concept?

Streaming Video - In my last post, I linked to an article about how short video clips that reinforce key concepts are effective in increasing student achievement. This article was based on a study of students in California. Sixth-grade students whose teachers showed them video clips during instruction improved an average of five percentage points more than students in a control group on a test to measure comprehension of state mathematics standards. Eighth-grade students improved an average of three percentage points more than students in the control group. The approach these students' teachers used was to incorporate approximately 20 standards-based, core-concept video clips into their daily lessons. The clips came from the unitedstreaming video-on-demand service.
BrainPop - There are over 50 animated shorts at this site covering five different strands of mathematics--algebra, geometry, data analysis, number operations, and problem-solving. As I stated in my last post, this site is powerful because it brings sound and animation to the concepts. Although you could not teach your entire curriculum with this site alone, the mini-movies here bring life to the static images that reside in textbooks. Classroom uses:

Introduction to a unit--a way to give the students a little background before jumping into a lesson.
Reinforcement--teach a lesson, and then have the students watch a related movie to reinforce their learning.
Intervention--some students just don't get some concepts when they learn from a textbook. Perhaps the movies here could be another way of reaching these students.

From the Classroom -

Alphabet Geometry - Transformations--slides (translations), flips (reflections), & turns (rotations)--of geometric figures on a coordinate plane have a place in the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade math curriculums. From my experience, it seems that younger students have a difficult time visualizing where on the coordinate plane a shape should end up after it has completed one of these changes. Because of this, I created a set of Flash movies that show block letters (polygons) undergoing these transformations. Classroom uses:

This past year, with 7th graders, I had the students watch the movies and actually draw what they saw after each movie was complete. They also wrote the definition of each.

Other Resources -