Recording Smart Board Lessons

[Brandi Moore]

I teach 7th grade math and I teach approximately 140 students. I have had a hard time trying to keep absent kids up to date with lessons that they miss. So, I have started using the Smart recorder to record my class each day for at least one class period. This will allow any student that is absent to watch the lesson just as if they were in class.

I also recorded myself teaching a whole entire lesson (w/o kids) and had the sub play it while I was out. It was a test review and was not very engaging.

I am looking for ideas for recording Smart lessons. Has anoyone done this before and/or does anyone have any ideas to share?

[Nick Romero]

I teach 6th and 7th grade math. I use the Smart recorder to record sample problems and post them on a channel on YouTube. The recordings are short (3-5 mins) and pretty straightforward and dry. I try to post the video before the lesson takes place so my students can preview what we are doing and get an early start on understanding it. Since they are short, I sometimes replay it during class. It's funny how much more attentive they are to the "virtual me!"

I've found this very helpful for kids who are out and for kids who need the extra review.

After recording them, I use Windows Movie Maker to do some minor editing. I like posting them on YouTube so that my students can comment on them and I can see how frequently they are accessed.

How do your students access your lessons?

[Brandi Moore]

I love this idea! Thanks for sharing... I like the YouTube idea. A lot of my students access YouTube. Do a lot of your kids go to watch the lessons?

Right now in order to access my lessons my students can log in to the lap tops in my room or any computer in the school to see the recorded lesson on a shared folder that is on our school network. I also have a classroom website through ANGEL and all of the recorded lessons are posted on ANGEL. I am still building my ANGEL site as we speak so I hope to have a full library of recorded lessons to start with next year.

I find that my kids are amazed at the "virtual me" as well which is quite shocking. Especially if I play a lesson and they can hear themselves in the background.

Have you ever used the Smart Recorder to have your students do some podcasting? or do you use other resources for podcasts?

[Paige M]

This is not an everyday idea, but when we were doing a serious in depth review, I would assign students a main concept, and they would then reteach it using notebook software and record it. They love watching themselves in middle school :)

[Nick Romero]

Thanks! I have a good amount of kids going to my lessons (here is a link to my channel). I teach around 60 6th graders and 20 7th graders. In the couple months the videos have been up, the most hits we got on one was 275 and the least is less than 20. I love the way YouTube lets me look at how often the videos have been viewed and where they are being viewed. Its not just kids from my school or PA where I'm from, but throughout the US (and even a smattering in the Phillipines and India).

I would like to use the smart recorder for my kids to podcast, but haven't yet. I've used voicethread for this in the past. They had some difficulty writing using the mousepad. I'd like to get them on my board to do it and am trying to figure out how to organize and schedule it. To start, I may make it a bonus opportunity where they can create a video on any topic that they would like and post it to our channel.

[DH]

Brandi,

I use a program called ScreenFlow to record segments of my lesson examples. I've never recorded an entire lesson. After I record a short segment (about 2 minutes), I post it to my school website for students to review. I prepare my lessons using SMART Notebook in advance. During my instruction, we're making notes in the Notebook file. After the lesson is done, I'll convert the .notebook file into .pdf and then upload that to my school website. This way, absent students can review a few video clips of the lesson as well as having access to all the examples that we discussed in class.

Hope that helps.

Diana