back, it’s not interactive enough. It’s too static, you can’t ask can progress yourself no matter where you are in the world, questions and there is no one sitting next to you to have a and what economic background you come from, you just plug conversation with afterwards. in to the internet and suddenly it’s all there for free. So really it’s like Victorian style chalk and talk teaching, only So how could you develop your project further Paul? Is this the students can repeat it as much as they want? end or what are you going to do? Exactly. But it’s an option that enables you to accelerate the learning of the class beyond what you would be able to do normally, because you can give them a bit more input, because outside of class they can go and do it as part of their homework, so by the next lesson they have a head start. But it’s by no way a replacement for teaching, and even things like the Khan Academy with their very complex interactive checks and tests is still like shackles on your learning because you can’t go as deep as you want to go. You can’t ask the questions you want to ask, you have to trawl through long videos to find it. If you invest lots of time and energy you will get far, but it’s never going to be as effective as being in a class. But it will get better, and 10 years from now the artificial intelligence behind the questioning will be such that you are interacting suitably. But for now, no.
Well I’m going to see if I can make some more videos that are better than the ones I found on the internet because that was the main failing with the videos I tried to use. The videos just weren’t of a good enough quality. There’s even one guy who has managed to sell a 100 videos on a DVD collection for a workbook he’s made for GCSE maths students and he’s probably made a mint. His explanations weren’t bad, they were the best I’ve found, but even they were pitched at a certain level. Our students would benefit from a library of 5-10 minute videos explaining the key principles in maths that they can watch over and over, I think that would be something they would actually use. So I’m going to give that a go and try and demonstrate a few principles – mechanics in A level and actually show them some of the things and record it on video because that would be more powerful than just hearing about it and reading about it. So, make a few videos. The interactive So how did go about this? side of it is tricky and you can’t do that without a proper investment in technology. Simple questions go so far but much This is how I set up the videos. There are 4 differentiated better would be pitching questions where students are at and videos, they get more sophisticated and there was a learning growing their profile. ladder of questions and the students had to see how far they could progress and they would get clues as to how to get to the But can’t students bring those questions back into the end from the more complex videos. classroom? So that’s what they did when they watched the videos at home? Exactly. My final comment on this is that it is good for short bursts of introduction or consolidation or key bits of Yes. And this is AS level maths and Yr 9s got to the end. information, then quick learning checks plus questions and immediately follow it up in lessons. Otherwise it just floats in Wow! Were they not really pleased about this and really the ether and doesn’t get anchored into the flow of learning. motivated by this? Yes, and the format was so fresh and interesting they were really excited by that. So would they have got to that level normally?
* * * In conversation with Jo Moore (English Teacher and Special Needs Coordinator)
The English Department investigated ways of encouraging and Possibly. But this provided a forum for them to spend their sustaining independent and wider reading among English A2 time on it at home and they could spend as much time as they students / Pre-U students including diagnostic self-assessment liked, whereas we couldn’t have done that in class. sheets, making a small amount of time available in class to discuss wider reading, and facilitating a range of formats for And the questions you set meant you could monitor who had student feedback: a reading group, wider reading projects, a done the homework? KEGSNet discussion forum, and personal reading journals. Yes. The first task I did was simpler and I think it was better in the end. But also everything hinges on the topic. In Maths certain things lend themselves to a video format whereas other topics are much more complex and you need to have a discussion.
These are reading journals. This is all independent reading. It’s not meant to be anything they have come across in class, just a log. So you can see the student has obviously taken real pride in it.
And this is extra, not part of their course? Perhaps it’s good for younger students because it gets them into good habits about independent learning, following up learning This is purely for enjoyment. From the start of the Pre U course themselves? we said that wider reading is part of the course. There is an unseen paper at the end and they have to be able to identify The philosophy of Khan Academy is that you get the internet some of the contextual factors around that unseen piece of and suddenly you’ve opened up a wealth of learning and you prose, poetry, whatever. So you need to have a sense of