Last week I spontaneously decided that it would be a good idea to film some students talking about their homework. I recorded the video on my mobile phone and converted the file into .avi format using Xilisoft 3GP video converter.
Subsequently, I’ve felt that this is a really good way of assessing work. Because the students themselves aren’t in the frame (an important point), they focus on describing their homework. Their understanding is evident, and a collection of short videos like these may be a useful tool when demonstating their progess to a sceptical Ofsted inspector.
I got some Year 10 students to talk about the Year 7′s work today and filmed them in the same way. There were two reasons. Firstly I thought it would be an interesting form of assessment for learning, because the Year 7 students would be able to see how other pupils interpreted their work, and consequently how to improve it. Year 10s got the opportunity to revise some of their work on settlement.
I’ve briefly edited the videos in Windows Movie Maker and the results are available to download below:
Year 7 talk about their work (9.4mb wmv)
Year 10 talk about Year 7 work (4.1mb wmv)
The files play in Windows Media Player, and because of the limitations of the recording device, you may need to turn up the sound on your speakers.
I did a session with year sevens on the relationship between mobile phone coverage and population density (maps easily found via Google images) – they thought it was great that they could all get their phones out to check their signal – one bright spark said he didn’t have his phone with him and asked me if he could borrow mine – he immediately worked out how to video ME! on my own phone – they all enjoyed it and are still talking about it 2 months later…
In general, we should encourage them to use mobile phones more constructively in lessons (even for short A4L starters, such as texting) – they’re also great classroom management material when they have both earphones in while they work – less distraction as they can’t hear their neighbour !