Taken from a painting of Kapiti Island at Sunset.
by Sonia Savage.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Using ShowMe as a Teacher

Last year as I mentioned in my previous post Antonio, a student showed me how to put a ShowMe into iMovie via an app Free Video (Video Download-iBolt Downloader & Manager).  I have played around with this and made a movie about solving a subtraction problem using rounding to a tidy number and then compensating. A very quick mental strategy to use when one number is near a tidy number.

However there are some students who are very slow to grasp how easy it is. I thought if I had a video they could watch that may help.  Previously they might have looked at a modelling book, although I never was satisfied with these as groups changed and .... well maybe I didn't make them work that well for me. A wiki with videos of work covered makes more sense to me.

Some of the students made ShowMe videos last year, and they worked well, but Antonio took it up a notch with his presentation.  I decided before I sent students off to do it this year, I needed to experience it myself.
As I did the ShowMe presentation I found that I had to be prepared, I found it best to do some writing before I pushed record.  I also found it was very important to watch the video through before the save, to notice any errors.  I had a number of tries before I was reasonably satisfied.

After making this movie, I have thought that while I will continue to make more of these presentations, I will also have students make similar ones to show their understanding.  When making my next video I will only show one problem, and add in a section showing it with materials. (The beauty of putting it in iMovie).  I will then leave a problem for the student to solve and gather materials to show me their thinking. They can then make their own ShowMe to add to our collection.

I am working on in my own teaching finding ways that will make a difference to the tail in Maths in my classroom so this will be a step into that inquiry. Does it make a difference?

Here is my first presentation that I worked on, the next time it will have the changes I mention above.



If you would like to see how I downloaded the ShowMe presentation so that I could place it in iMovie you can see that here in my previous post.

If you have other ideas for using ShowMe with students I would love to hear them.

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