I’ve studied video as learning tool in science and physics for while, and I’m convinced that digital video can placed at the upper end of useful technologies used in education. I don’t necessarily mean for making screencasts, but using video as an analysis tool.
Frank Noschese has shown several examples of using video on his blogs, including these hi-speed videos found on Action-Reaction and Frank’s Posterous post on colliding carts. As well, I wrote a paper on this topic and if you’re a glutten for punishment you can read it here on Scribd.
I have been reflecting on how I taught Physics 12 last year, and I’m not super happy with how much lecturing I did. In the big picture it probably wasn’t too bad and I didn’t give a lot of notes (which is a good thing). I used peer instruction from time to time, and I liked how that turned out. In contrast to this, Physics 11 is much more inquiry based course, which is great.
I was checking out some math, physics and standards based grading educational blogs when I came across a screencast of a teacher who used DimDim. Check out the screencast here and see how it went. More info from the lesson is found here.
I found the DimDim to be a bit slow paced, but maybe that’s just the nature of the beast when trying to broadcast live video. Dan, the teacher, also lamented that he found formative assessment very difficult.
