Tutorials: Infinite Learning Guidance

Scenario:
You're in geometry class, and the teacher has just finished giving a lesson on proofs. She comes around the classroom and you begin working in groups with others. You're confused. You have questions and your group isn't helping you because they can't really articulate what the teacher just said in the right way. You need the teacher. It's okay to need the teacher- except there's only eight minutes left for this period. Teacher still won't come near you, now moving on to another group. 

Ugh. Bell rings.

What do you do? You go home and ask Dad. Dad hasn't done proofs in 30 years. Aha! You get an idea- The Internet!  The Internet can help you! You'll just find help online. So you go to youtube, and you start searching. And searching. And- oops- no that's college geometry, but close. Not helping. Now you just wasted two hours, and it's getting late. Your homework is not done. You're tired.

Are you frustrated yet? Well you should be. You've gone through all of that and- worst of all- you haven't learned anything!  This is the 21st Century, and this should never happen to any student. It's an abomination. A teacher teaching an observable skill has a duty, a responsibility to make those skills available via the Internet at any time and any place in the world. At this point in the 21st Century, this should be common sense.

Robert Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction were based on the old ADDIE model of instruction, which was originally created to get people to memorize facts. Strangely, teachers still use this model of instruction, even though the level of thinking has (hopefully) changed. The Events are still a fine way to deliver instruction, and you can use them to get kids to do more than just memorize stuff, but if you need them to perform a task or observable skill, Event 5 is the money event- "provide learning guidance."

via http://ide.ed.psu.edu/idde/9events.htm

The school day and 40 minute periods are not always suited to all learners. To get students to perform an observable skill in such a limited amount of time that schools offer, a teacher must "guide learning" by then making themselves available after school, during prep periods, and sometimes before school. But what if you could make yourself available 24 hours a day, seven days per week? What if a teacher could be available any time a student needed them? Heck, what if you could offer learning guidance even after you were dead? Well you can; it's called youtube.com. I make myself available eternally at youtube.com/misterrezac .

For some subjects, I can see how a tutorial series may not work or make sense, such as social studies or civics class, but math teachers, technology, even language arts and science can make tutorials of conjugating verbs, solving punnet squares, creating graphs, and performing experiments. With an ELMO camera, teachers can now record all of these actions; here's my test.

This type of instruction is not just for students, though. Learning guidance for teachers through tutorials for professional development is, I would say, still a duty of a Tech Administrator or Facilitator. I created a tutorial series for teachers using Google Apps for Education, and it's a resource that continues to grow and be passed on to others. How many school tech "help" sites, have links to downloadable pdf files? How convenient is it for a teacher to be looking for a solution, only to continually be downloading pdf step-by-step instructions for stuff they don't need? The last thing I'd want to do as developer of teacher tech skills is to make them more frustrated. Let's not make teachers even more frustrated by technology than they already may be. Youtube it.

There are some rules when making tutorials for students or teachers that will provide the best results.

1. Don't just send them to Atomic Learning. While this site can be a helpful tool, guiding a student or a teacher's learning will be more effective if it's coming from their own people- context plays a big part. Besides- you are the leader.
2. Try to give them step-by-step instructions. It just helps keep things organized.
3. KISS - Keep it Short, Silly.  I'm going to say try not to go over five minutes. For some complicated tutorial steps, create two - five minute videos, rather than one - ten minute video. It's very much like the 10-2 teaching strategy, when you're in class you should take a break every 10 minutes for students to "soak it in." For some odd reason, a 10 minute tutorial can really drag on in this sound byte culture, especially if your voice is not animated. 
4. Keep the energy high. How many youtube tutorials have you seen that have put you to sleep? Smile with your voice! 
5. Use a professional tutorial software like Screenflow. It's the iMovie of screencast software. It uploads automatically to youtube.
6. Have fun, you're making a movie!

Accessing information on the Internet is a behavior most adults still haven't mastered, but accessing information is a much more important skill these days than memorizing facts. If two students both don't know an answer to a question, but one of them knows how to find the answer, that's an authentic skill that will help that student many times over in their future.

I still get excited when I hear a student or teacher say, "show me."  I will show you, and now I can- even when I'm dead. Now that's eternal learning guidance.

Using ELMO Cameras to Record Math Tutorials

I am not a math teacher, by any means, but, as a technology teacher, I do teach observable skills. I have therefore been on a crusade of late when it comes to creating tutorials. If you teach observable skills, I believe you have a responsibility to post your tutorials online so that students can get further guidance from you when they leave the classroom. You may not agree with me, but I know my students and they're going to go to youtube for tutorials anyway. Why not watch mine?

45 minutes is a very short time. How many math teachers have the time to get around to every student during a math lesson? It's very difficult, especially if you are teaching complex skills like algebra or calculus.

What if your students could rewind you, or fast forward you? Or pause you? With an ELMO document camera, and your PC or Mac, they can! Below is my second example of using the ELMO for a sample subtraction lesson that I did. Of course, I'm not a math teacher (but I did use manipulatives- dots!), so please accept my rudimentary example.

After a lesson, you let students practice, right? Here's how I think you can be super successful using tutorials in the classroom:

1. Model the skill live.
2. Have students then view a different example on your youtube channel. (here's my channel).
3. Allow students to practice, and let them access the tutorials as much as they need.
4. Check for understanding - give them a problem to see if they "get it" without using the tutorial.
5. Give homework. They'll have access to your tutorials at home (hopefully), so they can check if they need any more guidance.

A couple other things:

• Make sure your tutorials are step-by-step, not a glossed over version of your classroom lesson.
• The shorter the better. If you wax and wane for 10 minutes online, you may totally lose their interest, and they'll find your tutorials boring. Short, sweet, and to the point.

Tutorials are not a replacement for teaching, but a super compliment and great for guiding learning during practice. There's also a caveat to making tutorials- they need to come from the classroom teacher- context is extremely important. So- better to come from you than some guy from Illinois!


Thanks to luckyguy for the image.

Tutorial or not Tutorial?

As you know I've been talking about process in my practice a lot. I'm very interested in how kids learn, and I've noticed something that my students are doing. I wonder if other teachers see this, or how it plays out.

You see, since I've begun using tutorials in my classroom to guide teaching (just about on any software), the success of computers skills and project completion has gone up meteorically. And I mean through the roof. I've started training my kids how to use tutorials to complete tasks, and it has done wonders for my classes and practice.

I started an account on youtube (youtube.com/misterrezac) strictly for my tutorials, and also created a site where my students can see them by class.

Why was today different?
Now, this new trimester, all but three weeks long, I've used tutorials almost every day for just about every skill imaginable. Things have been going superbly. Sometimes I model the small skill then tell students to watch the tutorial anyway, but today I had a quite long modeling session, and some of the students decided that they didn't want to watch all of the tutorials that went with into the task of the lesson.

And, you can guess what happened. Many of them had questions, were confused, but they didn't want to spend the five minutes to go back and watch the tutorials. So they were frustrated that they had to go back.

Just go to the tutorials. But what form of teaching is that?

I've found lately that instead of modeling, I might show the students a very brief model or just the final product, and just have them go right to the tutorials. Over and over again, I find that with computer skills, the tutorials just work.  It's dramatic. I was being observed on my first week by my AP, and almost every student in my class, all brand new to Google Apps created a new Google Site from a template that I created without fail. Even I was astonished. This was the first time they were using Google Apps.

Do any other teachers find this is true, and if it is, couldn't the same be true with math tutorials and writing tutorials as well?

What do you think?

Google Apps for the Class- Using Site Templates

This is the next installment of my series Google Apps for the Class. Site templates is a new feature in Google Sites, and here I show you how to create a functioning blog or online journal that you can then feed out to a group of people, or in my case, students. This one's a little longer, but I hope it will be helpful!