Using video clips in the classroom is nothing new – a couple companies have even made a business model for this educational niche. But Hollywood movies can also have educational value, especially when trying to find errors and discrepancies within them. To assess some basic properties in matter in my chemistry class, I have been utilizing movie clips for help.
Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark
How Dense is Indiana?
When teaching density, I use a clip from Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark [You Tube Clip] whereby Indiana tries to swap a gold idol with an equivalent VOLUME of sand. Obviously, Indiana gets the mass wrong, as sand and gold have quite different densities. A similar exercise can be found at Glencoe Science.
I’m Melting?
Moving on to chemical versus physical change, I get a little help from the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz [You Tube Clip]. In the movie, the witch clearly claims that she is melting. Using clear evidence in the film, I ask the students to defend if she is really melting, or if she is chemically reacting, sublimating or vaporizing.
Others
Of course, movie clips can be used in many other areas of science (see below) and in other disciplines. Imagine having students compare inconsistencies in the Hollywood version of a classic novel to its literary original. How do you use movie clips in class?
This school year, I was fortunate enough to have an interactive whiteboard (from Interwrite) installed in my classroom. I was hesitant to get it at first, as I would lose some valuable front-board real estate to have it mounted.
However, once I started using it, I soon found out some interactive and intriguing ways ways to enhance my instruction. Here’s what I like about it:
More Student Interaction. I often find myself working too hard. That is, teaching to my students instead of working with them so that they can teach themselves. The IW has really helped to get students out of their seats and truly be more interactive in the lessons. Students love to write on the board, and it’s a great way to get students to contribute to the class.
New Technology WOW Factor. There are only a handful of IW’s in the school right now, and students still think it’s a pretty cool gadget. It’s like I have the iPhone of education hanging on my wall (sorry for the metaphor).
Great for Graphing. As a science teacher, I always have my students collect and graph data to analyze in class. The IW allows me to display graphs and write on them for analysis. The ‘write-on-able’ feature and the fact I can go back or save make the IW far superior to an overhead and some markers.
Import Work and other Media. The IW allows me to easily import many types of media. This is particularly nice when working with online or CD-ROM textbooks, as I can incorporate media directly from student texts into my lessons. I can also use non-digital media, as we have a copy machine in our building that will scan documents and e-mail them to teachers.
Save and Export Work. As I mentioned, I was a little cautious about losing some traditional whiteboard space. But I found that the IW actually expands this space, and I can create multiple pages and scroll back and forth. I can also record my movements on the IW to export them as a movie, and export the pages to a PDF file.
Demonstration and Interactive Use of Programs. I particularly like to use RasMol for molecular imaging. I can use the same basic mouse functions on the IW to manipulate the molecule on the board, as well as certain structures with the IW pen. Here’s an exported video of me manipulating a GFP molecule with the IW.
Interwrite Board + SMART Airliner Tablet = Extreme Whiteboarding! I still use traditional whiteboards integrated with the IW. I can assign multiple tasks for student groups to tackle on their own whiteboard, then take a picture of each and upload them to view. The students can present it on the board as I bring up their whiteboard picture. All the while, I am sitting in the back and can correct or add comments with a SMART Airliner Tablet or wireless keyboard/mouse. Again, the students produce, review and critique their entire lesson with my guidance.
Picture of Student Work:
Picture of Corrected Student Work:
If you can’t afford an interactive whiteboard this year, check out the economy solution – made from a Nintendo Wii [Link].
The Library of Congress has recently made a huge step in embracing such Web 2.0 concepts such as creativity, collaboration and sharing between users.
In an effort to provide better access to their collections, while symbiotically harvesting more information about those collections, the Library of Congress has created a Flickr page to host copyright-free pictures:
Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist…
…We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves.
More information is available on the Library’s Web site here and on the FAQ page here.You can read Flickr’s take here.
While this is a tremendous offer, don’t forget about the slew of resources already available from the Library of Congress (including a section for teachers). Check them out for your classes and for yourself.
And there is also an underlying motive here. To help the Library on this project, Flickr has even created a new publication model for public collections called The Commons. Both the LOC and Flickr are hoping to encourage other public institutions to follow their lead. (In fact, the National Library of Australia is already doing a similar project with Picture Australia).
But of course, making these collections easily available has tremendous implications in education. This is a perfect way to teach about tagging and sharing in the classroom, while using historically important content without the worry of students accessing inappropriate content. And these pictures have no copyright restrictions, so they can easily be used by students and teachers in endless and creative ways in many classes. Too bad Flickr is blocked by Websense in my district.
The use of digital photo frames to show slideshows is nothing new. But while I was setting up our house for Christmas (tree, lights, etc), I noticed the digital photo frame in the family room that has been repeating the same family pictures for the last 11 months (it was a 2006 Christmas gift).
Immediately, I realized that it could easily be used for another Christmas decoration. So I went to Flickr, searched for “Christmas” and found a slew of high quality, general Christmas pictures. After realizing that my frame only recognizes JPEG’s, I selected only those files – and ones that were shot horizontally (they look better in the frame than vertical ones).
Here is the result:
So I was able to create a temporary, yet dynamic Christmas slide show (interspersed with family pictures at Christmas). Beyond using this idea for other holidays and special days, I realized that I could do the same thing in my classroom.
Imagine topic-specific pictures that can showcased to peak curiosity, engage discussion, and generally highlight the topic at hand. These pictures can easily be changed by swapping out memory cards, so it would be fairly easy to get it ready for several lessons over a school year.
As digital photo frames are getting pretty cheap, they can easily be purchased for the classroom. Or, if you are like me, then your old electronics end up in your classroom. I might have to upgrade mine at home and use my old one at school!
I stumbled across NoteSake from a recent LifeHacker post. This little gem seems like a great idea – take notes and tag ‘em, send/share them, and organize them. So I tried it out.
The editor takes a little getting used to, but seems like it has quite a few features. For instance, I can do superscripts and formulas, which is definitely important to me as a science teacher. I realized that it isn’t very easy to paste old notes (taken from MS Word) into the editor, but when you are done, you can easily export the notes out as a Word document or a pdf.
Perhaps the neatest functions of NoteSake lie in the ability to tag your notes and to share them with others. Imagine being in a class where all students took notes with NoteSake, and were able to collaborate their notes together in a group.
However, this is an ideal tool that is not realistic for most public high schools. Most kids do not have laptops or even computers in their classroom, and may have limited internet access. In order for this to be effective, students would have to transfer their notes (which is not that easy) into NoteSake instead of taking them on-the-fly.
The use of digital photo frames to show slideshows is nothing new. But while I was setting up our house for Christmas (tree, lights, etc), I noticed the digital photo frame in the family room that has been repeating the same family pictures for the last 11 months (it was a 2006 Christmas gift).
Social Follow