Preparing for OMG

I was thinking back on my teaching career so far. I thought back to a time when I was in my first classroom teaching a class of grade 3 and 4 students. I was reading the words out for a spelling test, one of the first of the year, and I kept checking my watch. I was wondering when the "real" teacher was going to be back. Then it hit me.

OMG-I am the real teacher now.

Some of what I studied in university was helpful in preparing me for my career. Some was not. What I want students to think about is the feeling they would have when a customer or client looks at them after asking them a question, and then they realize that this person is now depending on them to know what to do.

This is the "Oh My Goodness" moment.

Students need to shift their thinking from learning things that teachers and parents tell them to learn, to thinking about how everything they learn changes them, or how it might equip them for their own OMG moment.

Because you never know when it will happen to you.

Our Unsung Heroes

SEA's in our district is the term for Special Education Assistant. They work with the most vulnerable students on a small group or 1 to 1 basis. They work with students with autism, students with global deficits, and students with physical impairments. They make less money than a teacher, perhaps because there is less formal education required to qualify for this position, and they officially work fewer hours. Yet in practice they have very demanding jobs requiring a vast set of skills to meet the needs of each kid.

Sometimes their students lash out at them, spit at them or cause them harm accidentally or on purpose. They wear brave smiles, laugh, and continue to do their duty with little or no complaint that I have heard.

I don't propose paying SEA's more, but I would like to see these SEA's get more professional development time. The relatively small cost of training SEA's to work with computers and new technology, perhaps some adaptive technology (speech recognition software for instance) if schools have the budget, would pay high dividends.

This would mean that even if a teacher was not aware of some of the technology options available to help a student with special needs - using speech recognition software, recording a student's voice using a computer and microphone, using interactive websites to teach math concepts - the SEA would know of a variety of technology strategies to help their students.

I think its time we gave these "unsung heroes of the school" tools that may save them time and effort. Everyone wins in the end when all members of the team have good technology skill sets.

Tell Kids They are Smart Enough

When kids come to me and say their computer is broken, and I ask them to tell me more I think of a person going to a doctor and saying "Something hurts, somewhere....can you fix it?"

I told some kids today that very smart people make it their jobs to write out error messages describing a complex problem in a language that non-engineers can understand. I demonstrated an error by creating a bad file name, and then trying to upload it to our classroom website's "editing room" (an online folder where kids share work). We read the error message, and not surprisingly we figured out what was wrong with the file name.

In an informal poll, more than half of my students feel they are smarter than their parents when it comes to operating a computer. Therefore I have concluded that they have been told by the adults who have taught them about computers thus far that they are not smart enough to figure out what an error message means, and that they as students are not to be trusted to read this message and attempt to troubleshoot the problem themselves?

What's the worst that could happen? They lose their work? Possibly, but not learning about computers and not learning how to troubleshoot problems would be a greater loss than a few paragraphs of typing.

Empower kids to troubleshoot. Initially they feel nervous or a bit overwhelmed, but we don't let them keep their training wheels on their bikes forever. Why should computer use be different?

Embedding the best of the Web - CUEBC 2009

I am off to CUEBC later this month! I will be presenting on using "embed codes" in education. What is embedding? Why is it important in education?

How about starting your math lesson off with a laugh:

Embed codes are ways to bring great videos, podcasts, maps, projects, slideshows and more - right to your own classroom website.




I decided to embed a map to CUEBC 2009 - being hosted at Sullivan Heights in Surrey, BC. That way, all my friends could know where to meet me. I went to google maps, and googled the address. I got a map, and in the upper right corner of the map box I found a button labelled "Link". When I clicked it I got an embed code. I then came here to my blog, and when I clicked on the "edit html" tab -


View Larger Map

I hit paste, and now I have a scrollable google map in my site! How could you use this in the classroom? Where would you take your students?

What if you wanted to share a story plan with your students:




This is an online mind map site, called bubbl.us. You or your students can create accounts here (with teacher and parent permission) for free. There are other sites like it that also support embedding. I created this story web to help parents support their grade 3 student at home plan and write their story about "My Life in BC." By providing parents and students with the story bubble diagrams via your classroom website, you might get fewer late assignments, or even better quality assignments.


Sometimes I need to support other kinds of learning at home. What about demonstrating how to do something like a math problem? How long has it been since your student's parents did math? Do they know the new "partial product method"?




I find making a screencast to be really helpful. I use a free program called Jing, and a free account at Screencast.com. I capture my voice and the action on my screen. Then I just use a program like MS Paint to do my math on. Forgive my messy handwriting; I am sure you would be neater.


What about presentations and slideshows? You can embed them from different sites, such as google docs.



Google docs offers you an online office suite of programs that works with Microsoft Office. I made this presentation for the Learning Disabilities Association of BC. Using the embed code allows me to bring my presentation to my audience, rather than having them try to search for it.

Remember the YouTube video we used before? Here is a great alternative for when you want to host private videos - Vimeo.com. Vimeo allows you to embed password protected videos. This way, you can shoot video with your students in it (again with permission and understanding between all parties) and embed the video in your website. Then just tell your students / email your parents what the password is. In the Coquitlam School District, we use SharePoint websites which are password protected. I put the password on the same page as the video, and then only people with access to my site can access the video.

Password is: star

Guitar Lesson from James Gill on Vimeo.

Finally there is Voicethread. I have used voicethread a with a number of students and across a variety of subjects. Its an online slideshow that you can narrate, and other people can comment on your voicethread when you invite them in.



What if you want to record your kids. Podcasts are a great way kids can show what they know, and if you control the podcasting account and are careful they don't reveal their names and addresses, I feel it is a safe and fun educational experience. And once again, you can embed their podcasts so you can rotate the content throughout the year. I use podbean.com. After making a podcast (audio recording on the net) I did a little digging and found that when I click on the "embeddable player"...you guessed it...you get your choice of code to embed your podcast. It comes with its own player!

Powered by Podbean.com

Here is an example of how we can do some cool storytelling online, using voicethread



Putting your voicethreads into your classroom website is another great way to showcase what kids know.

So to summarize, you can embed video, password protected video, maps, screencasts, podcasts, mind maps, and Voicethreads. There are more things you can embed, such as photo albums from Flickr.com, and this feature is becoming standard on almost all sites that host other people's content. Think about bringing the best of Web 2.0 to your class. Use embed codes - they make for a safe, reliable, and educational web classroom.

Marketing and Education

Marketing works by telling a story. I was watching Seth Godin speak to Google employees (probably their marketing team) and he said that unless you are selling them (consumers) food or shelter, what makes a person buy something is the story. Man I thought education was as important as food or shelter. And it is. But maybe my "clientele" don't think so.

So, what is the key to delivering good education? Maybe it's the story behind why kids need to learn "XYZ" (whatever you are teaching). If you can find the story, and if you can deliver the story with feeling, and if the student can see themselves in the leading role in this story, then they will commit themselves fully to learning.

Anyone who believes they are "too old to pretend" should analyze why they bought and continue to buy a favourite brand of cologne or perfume. Or jeans. Or swear by a car manufacturer. Or a brand of cat food - I mean come on, cats don't buy the food - you do! We all are buying the story.

On Wednesday, and on every day that follows I will tell a story where I get my students to picture themselves using kind of thinking and skills I am teaching. The story will have characters, a plot, themselves as the hero, and they triumph because they have learned how to ...(you fill in the blank here). And I have to deliver it all in about 2 minutes or I will lose my audience.

Maybe being a vivid storyteller able to deliver a story in a short amount of time will define what makes an impactful teacher in the future. Maybe it always has.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

A Jing is worth 15 minutes

Today I saved myself about 15 minutes. Rather than write out in detail a computer lesson (which may or may not be understood), switched on my microphone and did a screencast with Jing.

For those who don't know, a screencast is a recording of your screen and your mouse's movement on the screen. It also records your narration.

Wait, wait, there I go again. Click me.


There. That's one use I have for Jing. I have another... I began working with a team of teachers from another school who have formed a "Technology Learning Team". I will be the facilitator, which means I will help keep the conversation between them going and focused. I will help them set goals, and reflect on their progress. I also suggest ideas from time to time.

One of the ideas I had involved using Jing on their tablets. They use tablet computers to demonstrate math concepts. Tablets are so cool - laptops you can draw on! I thought that perhaps they could make a screencast of their lesson on their tablets, and then they could post it to their classroom website.

We can't always send textbooks home with our students in elementary school. What if they get lost? Parents often complain that they don't know how to do "new math", but with a screencast to demonstrate math techniques on the classroom website, they can support their children at home if they have trouble with homework.

Teachers are already teaching the lesson from the tablet. Jing is free to use. Let's put the two together and make "lessons to go", or save some lessons from year to year. Save time. Save money.

Who couldn't do with a little phun in their life?

I wish, I wish. I wish my students could have "phun" in class.




This is a free program that simulates a lot of the physical features of our real world. With this program I could teach about gravity, mass, density, buoyancy, the three states of matter (or at least two of them), balance and center of gravity, shape and space, tessalations and patterns, simple machines, friction and more. However our computers don't have 3D accelleration I think (this may be a feature of having a graphics card). Apparently the program needs to have a graphics card, and all our refurbished dell computers use on-board audio and video.

I showed this video to my 3 year old, and he wanted to watch it twice. Then he went straight for his blocks. I showed it to the kids of a grade 4 and 5 class, and they were mesmerized! I told them that with parent permission they can get the program, and install it themselves at home if they have a newer computer (with parent permission of course). I guess I will have to put a pin in this one!


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence

I'll take some YouTube to go, please

My iPod touch. Has there ever been a greater sign that a woman loves her man than electronics? Yes, but only if you include shiny electronics! A word of mouth company (Matchstick) contacted me through my blog here, and have asked me if I would test out a product for one of the companies they represent, Energizer. The product is called Energi, and it is a portable iPod recharger, running on two double AA rechargeable batteries. I think the iPod touch burns more energy on wireless video streaming. I was listening to a David Ford song on YouTube while doing the dishes, and after listening to some other songs, I had drained a lot of battery. Fortunately I was home to charge it up.

But what about when I am out, and teaching with my iPod. Lets say I am in a wireless area, and I have the ability to stream videos from YouTube to my iPod, and play sound out of some portable speakers. Then I can take kids on field trips to places and show them even more enriching content on site. What if I was at the Vancouver Aquarium, and the staff gave me temporary permission to use my iPod on their wireless network. Then we could walk to somewhere like the frog exhibit and read the signs, see the frogs, etc. But, I could also show them this video:

By going to the page in YouTube and clicking on the "more info" link, I could read out some really important facts about the global crisis of the loss of many species of frogs due to human impact on the environment. Having a source of power to ensure I can show the kids this video would be crucial. So would getting permission to be on someone else's wireless network, but hey those guys and gals of the Vancouver Aquarium are all about the learning, so I bet they'd do it in a heartbeat.

If you want to check out this video yourself, it is content put on YouTube by the Vancouver aquarium here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence

Marvellous Machine

This is the final result of the Marvellous Machine Project. We have had so many students participate, we have had to create a Marvellous Machine Project 2! This is because I don't have the "Pro" version, and therefore can only put 50 slides with narration per project. The "Pro" version costs around $60, and I might hit my school up for the money, if the administrator and/or staff find it is a valuable presentation tool. I believe that this is not the last voice thread my students and I will do, as students of all ages found they could be successful with it.

The More Things Change...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. One of the biggest obstacles I have in sharing my passion for computers in education with other teachers is that many feel that as soon as new hardware comes out, or the next version of a piece of software comes out, that the old stuff is obselete. This would mean to them that all that they had learned was obsolete.

Folks, it's just not so. What are some of the things that change:

Hardware - just like cars, computers age, and they do not improve in performance with age. It needs to be replaced. Computer labs are best replaced as a whole, not piecemeal. This should be done because then you can have longer stretches of time where your lab is under warrantee as a whole. Most importantly, you can provide your students with a consistent environment, and that is key for success. If your students spend a lot of time on hardware glitches and reboots, then your lessons will be less impactful.

I have approached my parent group about having a parent spearhead a committee to focus on raising funds gradually to replace the computer lab as a whole in the future. We haven't had any takers yet, but I am still hopeful. We have a small dedicated bunch of parents, but I hope we get even more parents putting their hands up in support of their school community.

What stays the same - Software (sort of). While Microsoft has added a lot of features to Microsoft Word over the years, the edit menu still contains "copy, cut, and paste." You can save a file by clicking on "File" and choosing save. In fact, many of the commands are in the same place as always. There are common factors between programs, and with so many applications these days on the web, it doesn't make as much difference what kind of programs or operating systems you have.

What stays the same - kids like collaborating with others, kids want to share what they have learned with others, kids like being engaged in what they are learning, and kids like be offered choice as to what they learn, how they learn, and yes when they learn.

What stays the same - we as teachers have to keep our eye on what is going to be relevant to our students' futures, and equip them with the skills they need to be successful at whatever endeavor they choose. This means moving out of our comfort zones, an inch at a time, on a daily basis. We the teachers must keep moving forward.

Google and Schools

Mobile post sent by jagill using Utterz. Replies. mp3

Students With Learning Disabilities

Last night was my first night teaching a course for students with learning disabilities of different descriptions, and their parents. The students paid for the course, but the parents attend for free. My reasoning was that parents have always been the strongest advocates for their children, their best teachers, and their greatest source of support. I was overwhelmed by the response to the course, and pleased to see that every child had a parent in attendance.

Our learning intention was to establish what the course objectives were, and then to begin talking in the language of computers and the Internet.

Our course objectives are to find common factors between programs so that we can learn them more quickly, to learn some basic file management ideas, and to get comfortable navigating the computer folder system for future assignments.

Our next assignment will involve graphics and art. I took all the kids pictures with a webcam, and they moved them into folders. Now we will learn some basic graphic skills, and make "disguises" with those pictures. Then they will use their pictures to plan a story, using an online story planning tool which creates "bubble diagrams." These bubble diagrams are better done on a computer than with pencil and paper becuase you can change their organization, cut and paste parts of your plan, share your plan with other students, and then save it in different places (a document, or a blog) so that you will not lose it. And its free. I will write more on this series after Wednesday. And if any of my students from the course are reading this - how smart of you....now go do your typing homework!

The Toolbox

I would like to thank the many other educational bloggers out there, like Vicki Davis and Jennifer Wagner. These are only two of the many people who have helped me to build "my toolbox."

On the topic of irresponsible Internet use by elementary and especially middle school children. We must not be so afraid of it, any more than we will be afraid of children not completing their homework on time, or calling each other names. Of course it will happen from time to time. It happens in elementary schools, and it happens in middle schools. There are ways to right the wrongs in other behaviour situations, and we as teachers must be aware of the nuts and bolts of Web 2.0 to know wrongs can be made right on the Internet.


What needs to happen is that we have good policies in place, make kids aware of them, teach them the difference between right and wrong, teach them the value of making the right choice over the wrong choice, and offer them really interesting lessons. The more interesting the lesson I created this year, the more sustained effort I saw from all students. Including very defiant students. Students with Individual Behaviour Plans. It is also in how you "pitch" your ideas. If you are passionate about an idea, if you believe the idea, if you can communicate its power, then they will believe. Powerful ideas and really interesting lessons taught with passion are the three greatest ingredients that go into one classroom management plan.

Children want to collaborate. Many kids need to be taught how to collaborate. Learning this lesson is more important than any computer program, or any computer skill. Many will do it right if started with the right foundation - they think they are learning a computer program to do a task. What they are learning is how to create something bigger than themselves, by working with someone else. And, in my computer class, I can offer more choice of topics than can be offered in any other course. Here are some important collaborative web 2.0 tools.


Kerpoof.com - an incredible collaborative drawing program. You don't have to collaborate to use kerpoof, but why wouldn't you?!? You can paint online, experiment with different classical styles of art. It comes with lesson plans with teachers. It is free!

VoiceThread.com - collaborative presentation making. You can as a teacher sign up an account, and have students create art and narrate stories about their art online. It is free to make the first 3 voice threads. I love free!

YouthTwitter.com - like twitter, but angled towards providing a safe place for teachers and students to interact, ask questions, share projects, etc.

While we as "digital immigrants" see these projects as students learning computer skills, the big idea, the Learning Intention is developing a value system within our class and our society that instills in each child the desire to be socially responsible "digital natives."



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

VoiceThread in the Works - Robots!

I was watching a great video called the "little yellow drum machine" at:

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/112

You can see this little wonder below:

It was a huge hit with the students. This has great entertainment value, and can be used to teach about music, math, science and technology. I used it to start a writing activity. The students are going to create a picture using ms paint. It will be a picture of a robot, accomplishing a task that they themselves don't want to do. They have to be specific, and show how the structure of the robot relates to it's function. Relating structure and function is also an important idea in high school biology. Here is an example of what the start of one picture might look like:

Granted, this is only a start, and my students are labelling the parts, but I think it will be a big hit. The students were working on task for 15 minutes, quiet as church mice. This is always a good sign. I will follow up with a post of the voice thread when I finish.



This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Selling ideas to others...

Right now I am in the middle of working with iMovie on my mac at home. It all began a couple of weeks ago with a suggestion I made at a meeting. I had made a video to teach a lesson on guitar, as I had a substitute teacher coming in for a lesson. I sat in front of my web cam, taught the lesson, saved it , burned it onto a DVD with our schools external burner, and voila! Lesson is ready. In the meeting with the primary teachers, we were talking about the 6 traits of effective writing, and how we wished we could get a literacy support teacher in our school. I thought it would be cool to videotape a well known teacher modelling these writing techniques in a lesson. Then we could have it on DVD, look back on it when we wanted to, etc. So, I got a little time out of the class, Shirley Ann Rubis came to teach a lesson (thank you Shirley Ann), and within 1.5 hrs we filmed a great writing lesson aimed at primary students. Now what is the next important part?

Music. I have to pick some good music, and insert some thoughtful, possibly clever or funny sub-titles. Why? Because I believe that if my colleagues see a nicely put together presentation, they will be more impressed than if they just saw the raw footage. Is this a really terrible thing to think?

Must be nice to have all that time....

Sometimes people say to me "where the heck do you get all the time to learn how to do this computer stuff?" I ask them, have they seen what is on tv these days? What with the writer's strike and all, when the kids go to bed, I poke around the Internet and see what's going on. What I don't get is when people say to me "Must be nice to have all that time to play around with computers?" Where to begin:

1.) I am playing in a sense, but it's more like expermenting to see what new skills I can acquire. It is gratifying, but I am not fooling around here. This is part of my job.

2.) I have the same 24 hr day as you.

3.) I let other people do the learning for me.

Its like professional reading. So few people have time to do all the professional reading they would like. I do some professional reading every day. I read from blogs I subscribe to. I skim the titles and lines in my google reader, and read the articles that I feel would be the best use of my time. If I continue to read on my lunch hour or prep period, or with a coffee in the morning 3o minutes a day, I figure I am going to be a changed teacher at the end of the year. I already feel like I have gotten so much this year, and it's not over yet.

I also let other peope pick the good stuff, and then I pick their picks on del.icio.us. This is a website where people share their bookmarks. Beside each website that is bookmarked, you can see how many people have bookmarked it. You can also click on one of those people's names and search the bookmarks they wish to share. I search for a "tag" or keyword that someone has put on a bookmark of something I want. I might look for "St. Patrick's Day" and "lesson." Then I read what other people have bookmarked. If I find someone who has a few bookmarks like mine, I take no more than 5 minutes to look at the titles of their bookmarks. If I like it, I save it in my bookmarks. Now I am sharing it.

It is a mistake to re-invent the wheel. See farther. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

The Death of a Dinosaur

Sad news today. A dinosaur died. It was the old school projector that I had made portable by putting it on an overhead cart, and connecting it in my classroom. We replaced it with a newer projector a few years ago when we discovered the projector didn't have very good colour anymore, it was getting dimmer, and text was hard to read. I tried to get it to work in my classroom, and with a few scavenged cables from other sources, it did. But today, my students couldn't read text that I magnified to 150%, at a distance of 8 feet from the screen. I think that's the ball game, folks. It still sort of works for pictures and video, but I needed a way to project my notes.

I type up notes, and change them when students make comments and suggestions. I prepare notes ahead of time and blank out the words for kids who can't keep up in note taking. That way they only have to write down a few words. I post them on my website so that parents can look at them, and kids can share with their parents what they learned that day. They can download them if they forgot their copies at home, and print off a copy if they like. I save these notes, and turn them into worksheets and tests. I re-use them and tweak them for the next year.

Now I am back to writing on the overhead, and writing on the chalkboard.

hmphf.


I guess the question is: How do I keep moving forward? I will think of something.

Want help with your kids homework? Just "Ask"

But don't ask me. I like ask.com. I like it way better than google for kids doing research on the Province of Saskatchewan. I still have to teach my kids about "sponsored results", in a recent search for 'facts about Saskatchewan' I turned up the sponsored link "Meet Saskatchewan Singles"! My heart was all a-twitter! Don't worry, no kids present, just adults from the Parent Association for my school. They didn't seem as interested in meeting singles from Saskatchewan either, but they did like the "narrow your search" feature on the right of the browser window, and the "expand your search" options. Both turned up good results that the kids could use (facts about Saskatchewan's history, facts about Manitoba, etc.). Also, it came up with some handy images, and the wikipedia entry. Jury's out on Wikipedia for many teachers, but I think if your student's can read it, then it is worth a look.

I tried out the askkids.com, which I didn't like at all. I found a search for Saskatchewan turned up nothing as the first hit, and the other searches that it hit were completely un-readable for kids. Not going there again.

Askkids.com, not Saskatchewan. Been to Saskatchewan in fact.


Twice.


Very nice people


A bit on the flat side.

I digress. Murray Peters, a vice-principal and all around smart guy agrees. Ask is the better search engine. So, if you want homework help for your kid, just "Ask."

Like making soup without a pot.

Tonight was my second presentation on computer use in education. I was doing a presentation on how computers can be used to help students with learning disabilities. Then the Internet went down in my network. It was down the next day too. Ack! What now. What about my presentation that I had prepared online with google docs?

I backed up my presentation as a pdf file on my flash drive. Why google docs doesn't let me save it as a ppt file is beyond me, as their other document programs save files as MS word .doc and excel spreadsheets. Then I did the presentation using programs that were on the local machines, and offered some hands on activities. The best was using Audacity. This program records sounds, and lets you turn it into MP3's (with the help of another program). Furthermore it lets you edit the sound, add other sounds. I demonstrated how to make an audio story, and add royalty free sound effects. Below is an embed of my presentation:




The parents were all very receptive. They asked me questions for about 45 minutes. Some were visibly frustrated by how their child is not progressing at school. Some blamed the school and the teachers and made disparaging remarks (which I stated up front that I cannot allow in my computer lab, and in my school). Others said that their school and their district just didn't know enough about their child's condition. Some parents felt that they were the doing all the advocating, and that they had to be the ones to go to the teacher, and that the teachers never sought them out.

I feel their frustration. Every parent wants to know that their child will succeed in education, and have the keys to a successful life. But, we have always been our children's best advocate. They are more than a genetic investment in the future. They are the physical proof of love and the existence of God if you ask me. We will look after them, long after they have become adults. When I asked my student services person about this, she said many parents feel frustration today and are looking for a way to fix the problem. But, sometimes you can't fix a disability. A disability is for life.
Instead let's arm ourselves and our children with knowledge. Knowledge first of what the disability is, what it means, and what it DOESN't mean. Second, let's get creative and find more tools to solve the problem. Like one of those swiss army knives that can't fit in your pocket because it is so jam packed with options.

Finally, let's not lose perspective of what the final goal is. For kids of all abilities to become happy and self-fulfilled people. What better goal can there be for education than to give kids the power to be happy when they grow up.

How not to Scare off Substitute Teachers

In our district, an automated system calls TOC's (teacher on call, AKA substitute teacher). When a TOC hears a job description they don't feel is suitable for their talents, they can hang up, and the system calls someone else. So, I thought, what happens if I tell the person who is coming in for me that they have to teach a couple blocks of music. Maybe I get a lot of hang ups, and I HAVE to get to the dentist. Furthermore, no canned lesson this time. The kids need to practice guitar. There is a guitar test coming up.

So I remembered something I read in a recent blog (probably Vicki Davis flagged this one), and I did my lesson over recess time. I talked and strummed my guitar in front of the webcam on top of the computer. Then I burned it onto DVD with the external DVD burner that the school district has given to our school. I wrote the instructions on the DVD (being cheeky):

1.) Guitar lesson - step 1 - don't panic

2.) Insert DVD into DVD player

3.) Hit play. Hit pause when the guy on the screen says so.

Here it is:


Guitar Lesson from James Gill on Vimeo.

I told the TOC to pause the DVD at different times to let the kids practice. I didn't write out a script. I didn't practice what I was going to say. I didn't edit anything, including when the PA announcements came on in my room right at the start of my lesson. Talk, burn, dentist.


I came back to school just as the TOC was leaving for the day. She had no prior music experience. She thought that the lesson went really well, and that she will remember what this idea for the future.

Burning a DVD works really well from a webcam. The file sizes are usually small, you never have to film it first, then put it onto the computer, and then burn it. There is even an option in the DVD creating program that allows you to capture your film right from your webcam.

I told a few teachers how it had worked. All of them said they would never want to step in front of a camera and record themselves for anything....however one teacher said she might use the unobtrusive webcam to make a recording of the special needs child in her class so specialists familiar with the child's condition can make recommendations as to how to help create a plan for success for that child. I hope it works.