I was made aware of EdPuzzle by a colleague at AHS, but it kept cropping up on various blogs and PLNs that I subscribe to (most notably here). I decided to give it a try and played around with it for a while, and looked at some of the assignments and videos created by my colleagues at AHS and by others from around the globe. It allows a wide variety of different formatting and most importantly offers support for mathematical text input (which is not as common as it should be!).
EdPuzzle allows for an easily flipped classroom. This is the main usage of the app, and although I see numerous other ways to apply it in the classroom setting, this is how I plan on applying it for the majority of my usages. The beauty of this app is that it allows a teacher to put the initial learning exercises in a student’s hands and create accountability through quizzes, questions, and comments timed directly with pertinent information in the video. This is great because it allows me to preteach concepts before class but still have a good idea of how students are tackling the information on their own, to see how I should pace my lesson. Additionally, many of my homework assignments are centered around creating a question in my students’ minds, that we then answer in class. EdPuzzle allows me a more streamlined and fluid way to do this. It would be good to note that in order to effectively use EdPuzzle I had to also learn how to use a screen capture app, for which I chose Screencastify. It is effective, simple, and speedy! The only hurdle I really need to tackle now in order to feel very comfortable creating good ed-videos is how to draw effectively on my computer screen because a mouse is essentially worthless as a writing implement. I may end up using a camera and filming myself at a whiteboard, or better yet, using a doc-cam and filming myself working on worksheets… This tech tool is powerful, since it allows learning and data collection to occur without my presence, thereby allowing me to assign effective and powerful homework assignments. Commonsense points out that passive video watching usually only requires lower-level thinking. The interactive videos provided by EdPuzzle allow for much more engagement and “depth of learning, especially if teachers take advantage of the options to add supplemental resources and links.” There are some clumsinesses in the implementation of this tool, but it does allow for built math notation, and it integrates seamlessly with Google Classroom, my chosen platform for homework, classwork, and assignments. My biggest gripes (which seem to be shared by the general community) are that it is difficult to edit videos, I cannot record videos directly in EdPuzzle, and that the question/submission options are a little limited. Nonetheless, a really powerful tool that I am excited to implement in my classroom. I think this tool is a great step towards increased usage of technology in the classroom. It allows me to model the use of technology in the classroom for the presentation of information, and I hope at some point in the future to get my students to use this to present and submit their understanding of the concepts in class. This platform also allows me to responsibly and effectively use material created by educators and leaders from all over the world. This is a great way to demonstrate digital citizenship and collaboration for my students, as well as model what I consider to be high-quality products, and what we should all consider to be a refined product. I do not see this tool totally revolutionizing my teaching of math, or my students’ access to it. But it does offer a new way to alter my classroom, more effectively assign homework, and get students working in the 21st century.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Julian SpringerMath Department - Animas High School Archives
December 2019
Categories |