Title: “How-to with A.R.: Making the most of Accelerated Reader”
Audience: 2nd Grade (and beyond?) parents of Fayetteville Christian School, Fayetteville, NC
Purpose: This video was created to demonstrate to parents how to use AR Book Finder and Renaissance Learning Home Connect. These two features of Renaissance Learning are paramount in providing a framework in which students can read and succeed at levels appropriate for them. This allows for individualized instruction and assessment. After sending home informational parent letters for both, as well as the discussed STAR test results, I received very limited feedback. Many students are not close to their goals and are not testing on Accelerated Reader books as often as they should. After asking around, I determined that parents were simply unaware of what these two features have to offer. A guided demonstration allows parents to first view actual usage of the features. They can then replay the training video as many times as needed, pausing along the way while they complete each stage of finding AR books and tracking the AR progress of their children. Closed Captioning makes this training even more accessible as it describes in written form what I am describing about the highlighted components in each feature.
Audience: 2nd Grade (and beyond?) parents of Fayetteville Christian School, Fayetteville, NC
Purpose: This video was created to demonstrate to parents how to use AR Book Finder and Renaissance Learning Home Connect. These two features of Renaissance Learning are paramount in providing a framework in which students can read and succeed at levels appropriate for them. This allows for individualized instruction and assessment. After sending home informational parent letters for both, as well as the discussed STAR test results, I received very limited feedback. Many students are not close to their goals and are not testing on Accelerated Reader books as often as they should. After asking around, I determined that parents were simply unaware of what these two features have to offer. A guided demonstration allows parents to first view actual usage of the features. They can then replay the training video as many times as needed, pausing along the way while they complete each stage of finding AR books and tracking the AR progress of their children. Closed Captioning makes this training even more accessible as it describes in written form what I am describing about the highlighted components in each feature.
My Uses for Screencasts: Screencasting definitely helps me to demonstrate tools, applications, and resources to a wide audience of parents, students, and beyond. I have used screencasting before to create multiple how-to videos that were part of the same online tutorial. Screencasting allows me to engage both visual and verbal channels in adherence to the Dual Coding theory. Last year, my first grade colleagues and I found ourselves quite often creating worked problem fliers for parents on how to perform math tasks within the new Common Core guidelines. While at my current school we do not teach to Common Core standards, sometimes math procedures can still be a bit confusing. I can see myself with our digital Teachers’ Edition, as well as a variety of online manipulatives and creator softwares, working examples of math problems in a screencast for parents and posting it to my class webpage.
My Learners’ Uses for Screencasts: My grade level colleague and I have found an interesting website called Let’s Recap. This website allows us to post questions for students with text and/or video. Students then provide video recordings of their responses. I need to play a bit more on the website, but I can imagine students creating screencasts to post in response to a variety of questions. Screencasting could also be used by my learners en lieu of a presentation in front of the class. Normally I do all I can to get a student to speak publicly despite intimidation. However, this year I have a selectively-mute student in my class who could perhaps speak more comfortably when recording her voice and the computer screen instead of knowing she or her face are in front of the class.
My Learners’ Uses for Screencasts: My grade level colleague and I have found an interesting website called Let’s Recap. This website allows us to post questions for students with text and/or video. Students then provide video recordings of their responses. I need to play a bit more on the website, but I can imagine students creating screencasts to post in response to a variety of questions. Screencasting could also be used by my learners en lieu of a presentation in front of the class. Normally I do all I can to get a student to speak publicly despite intimidation. However, this year I have a selectively-mute student in my class who could perhaps speak more comfortably when recording her voice and the computer screen instead of knowing she or her face are in front of the class.