Chronicle

How do I document something I am doing?
Who's it for? Other teachers at Punahou. With your permission, we might choose to share some on iTunes U to give other people a glimpse at the cool stuff we are doing here on campus.

Why? As part of the mission of ITLI (Institute for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation) we hope to spark more dialogue on campus and more sharing of things that work well and enhance the learning that is going on in our classrooms.

What? We are looking for great examples of teaching and learning that will help us to provide more differentiated instruction and reach different types of learners in our classrooms. Anything from a tip on quickly surveying student opinions, to a cool new questioning strategy, to a full lesson plan, would be interesting for other teachers to view.

When? Right now! Or whenever you have something neat you want to share... contact a CRT or a TRT and we can help you to document it.

How? Lots of different ways to do it... We're looking for these parameters:


 * Ideally, 2-3 minutes. No more than 5 minutes.
 * Format should be a Quicktime movie file (ends in MP4, MOV, or M4V). Most online tools, and all Apple tools, export to this format. Try "Export to iPod" if available.
 * You don't need to include all the details of how you did it. This is really a "teaser" or quick glance at what you did, and what its effect was on learning. If teachers have more questions they can contact you.

Keynote You can create a four or five slide show in Keynote. You might include a screen shot, or photos of kids during the activity. You might even include a video. Choose "Record slideshow" then Export to iPod.

Screen Recording You can record right from your screen in Quicktime Player (Snow Leopard version). You can talk and show what you've been doing, if what you are showing is something online. This might be a nice option if you are showing a Moodle activity, for example.

Video You might choose to do something in iMovie. You can create a short video with the following format:


 * What was the problem/issue/perplexity?
 * What did you decide to try?
 * How did it work?
 * How do you know when your kids are "getting it"?

You might try using some or all of the following shots:


 * You, talking about the above points
 * Classroom footage of you introducing the concept (try asking a kid to film)
 * Classroom footage of kids doing the activity
 * Sample student projects
 * What did students think?