TMI Flips English
  • Welcome!
  • Blog
  • Thomasson Morris Instruction
  • About Me
  • Contact Me

Five Ways We Use ShowMe in our Flipped Classroom

8/26/2014

1 Comment

 
A few years ago when I was just starting to explore flipped learning, I was given an iPad by the district edtech TSA.  I had never used one (or any iOS device) but I needed a way to make videos so it seemed like a logical choice.  

The biggest problem was that I didn’t know how to make videos.  I had done some very basic video editing in the past, but lacked knowledge about any current apps or software.  The TSA suggested ShowMe as a good first step.  It’s an interactive whiteboard app for iPad that lets you narrate over slides.  There are very few choices - adding pictures, a few colours, and an erase function.  And that’s it.  I know it may seem limiting, but when you are first starting out, reducing options makes something Really Scary seem far more approachable.

So I started making etymology videos.  I took what I would have done in class and put it on video.  What I found was that I could get through the instruction in ⅔ the time, AND be able to walk around the room helping students and keeping them on-task.  Students who missed class or spaced out could see the video again on their own time.  Slow writers could pause whenever they wanted to.  Even though I didn’t end up assigning it as homework, it saved us so much class time that we were able to do far more writing than we would have pre-flip.

The next thing I used ShowMe for was creating videos of me reading the text aloud (Night, Looking for Alaska, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby and Crown of Dust so far).  I would put the text on screen, then read it aloud.  I sometimes mark my place with little dots down the margin so students can follow along.  
I use those videos in two ways: 1) to have a live discussion while students hear the text being read, and 2) to give students a choice to read to themselves or hear me read.  For the former, I found that if students used a backchannel like todaysmeet.com to discuss AS they read, they cleared up misunderstandings far more quickly and retained more information from the reading.  For the latter, it’s impossible to read live AND have kids read in silence to themselves at the same time.  So by putting the reading on video, they got the choice and everyone was happy.

Lately, I’ve been working on a new use for ShowMe.  I created some instructional videos, like these for grammar, but never really used them well in class because they didn’t really fit into my instruction anywhere.  However, I did realise that much of what I would “go over together” in class could be put on video.  So instead of teaching vocabulary live, I use these videos and students watch them on their laptops and create the flashcards digitally.  That way, they can control the pace of the instruction.  

I am also going to use the same structure for our Language Mastery practice (sentence correction with vocabulary integrated).  Students will correct the sentence on their own, then watch the video and note the changes they missed.  I’ve always struggled with the idea that students wouldn’t be able to get all of the instruction and explanations live, but putting them on video means that they always have access to it at their own pace.

Note that I am not assigning ANY of these videos as homework.  I am using them as self-paced modules during class time.  If you’re going to give homework, then videos are less bad than other work (so long as it’s short and comprehensible for all students), but we believe that homework, as it is given in most classrooms, is not good for kids.  Having them struggle through an assignment they have questions about and need help on is painful for parents (and for the support teachers who help them with their homework!) and frustrates kids.  /rant

How else do you use ShowMe or other interactive whiteboard apps in your classroom?  If you want to see all of my ShowMe videos, you can find them here.  Want some help getting started on ShowMe?  I did a presentation for JET last year where I walked through how to use ShowMe.  You can find those slides here.

This is the sister post to one Andrew wrote about LessonPaths.  You can find that, and lots of other great posts, at concertedchaos.com.
1 Comment
Kian link
11/28/2020 05:42:25 pm

Appreciate tthis blog post

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I'm a math teacher masquerading as an English teacher. I write about my classroom, technology, and life. I write in British English from the Charlotte, NC area.

    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Follow Me On Twitter!

    Tweets by @guster4lovers

    Archives

    August 2023
    October 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012

    Categories

    All
    American Literature
    Andrew Thomasson
    Background
    Blank White Page
    Cheesebucket Posse
    Coflip
    Collaboration
    Common Core Standards
    Creativity
    Crystal Kirch
    Curriculum
    Editing In Camtasia
    Essay Exposition Class
    Explore Flip Apply
    Explore-flip-apply
    First Week Of School
    #Flipclass
    Flipcon13
    Flipping
    Genius Hour
    Grading
    Humanities
    Ion Lucidity
    June School
    Karl Lindgren Streicher
    Kqed Do Now
    Language Of Humour
    Literature
    Live Response
    Mastery
    Metafilter
    Nerdfighteria
    Ninja News
    Patterning
    Procrastination
    Professional Development
    Puppets
    Reading Journal Videos
    Reflection
    Resiliency Project
    Sam Patterson
    San Francisco Stories
    Showme
    Spring Semester 13
    Student Post
    Success
    Technology
    Tfios
    The Beginning
    The Mess
    @thomasson_engl
    Tired
    Today
    Today's Meet
    Troy Cockrum
    Twitter
    Ubuntu
    Video
    White Blank Page Project
    Why We Read
    Youtube

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.