Change online teaching approach after a week?

[wellfleet]

That sounds cool, Liquidambar.

I'm now learning how to use the Windows Photos app to trim a Zoom video to the parts I want to save. Rendering takes a long time, but that's ok. What's worked best at my place is to save the (huge, I mean really, really, huge) file to my Onedrive and then give students the link to that. We'll see!

[Mobius]

I'd ask to see a students notes from their reading before going further with them. A lot of students frankly don't read and there is more onus on them to do so right now.

[mamselle]

That sounds cool, Liquidambar.

I'm now learning how to use the Windows Photos app to trim a Zoom video to the parts I want to save. Rendering takes a long time, but that's ok. What's worked best at my place is to save the (huge, I mean really, really, huge) file to my Onedrive and then give students the link to that. We'll see!

So you record the Zoom video by creating a call that you record of yourself alone?

Hmm....Also interesting.

By "rendering" do you mean when Zoom saves it to your computer or your external hard drive or whatever?

Is that something that could also be mounted on YouTube?

Learning...!

M.

[wellfleet]

So you record the Zoom video by creating a call that you record of yourself alone?

By "rendering" do you mean when Zoom saves it to your computer or your external hard drive or whatever?

Is that something that could also be mounted on YouTube?

You could use Zoom to record a one-person meeting--I'm recording class sessions, or at least parts of them. We have guidance to record everything presented synchronously to a class meeting, in case some students can't attend and need to catch up on their own time (many of my students are parents with little kids at home and no available childcare). I'm working to record the "important information here" bits while minimizing recording of social chit-chat, etc..

Once you leave a Zoom meeting, if you have made one or more recordings, Zoom then takes a while to process that recording into an MP4. I then lightly edit those files, if necessary (like trimming the beginning and end) using the Photos app built into Windows 10. There may be better tools for this, but I can't install new software on my work computer, so I'm glad to have something already there. Then I upload the GIGANTIC file to my Office 365 OneDrive storage, because from there I can post a link to my CMS so that students logged into the campus network can play the video from home.

We're not using YouTube, so I'm not sure what the procedure would be from that. But you can definitely use Zoom to make videos and it's easy to film screen sharing.

[doc700]

I am teaching classical mechanics and they are solving problems.  Free body diagrams, extended calculations that take 20 lines of math etc.  They use the whiteboard option in Zoom.  Its not at all fun to use if you dont have a touch screen (and frankly a stylus) but about 80% don't and they all seem to get by.  They usually keep some kind of collaboration going on their whiteboard, but each students each has a piece of paper in front of them where they are working in parallel.  They will try to do some calculations and will check every few lines/write that on their communal whiteboard.   

Graphing seems easier actually.  Are they graphing on some computer based software program?  Just have someone share screen with the software.  Then have the group contribute to what to type?

I was not a fan of moving to Zoom for problem solving as I thought it was going to be very difficult to do the types of problems we do.  It actually hasn't been bad.  There are several advantages.  When I set breakout rooms in Zoom, it randomizes the groups.  This means that the groups are often more diverse in terms of skill level than when they could chose groups by sitting next to their friends.  I can also pop through the breakout rooms and get much better feedback than when I tried to wander around the lecture hall.

I teach a physics course which might be similar to your course.

[...]

We are then doing live lectures on Zoom at the class time.  With Zoom we can do breakout rooms where they discuss with classmates and solve problems.  I think they like the interaction, particularly after sitting at home watching so many lectures.  The blackboard feature in Zoom is not easy to work with for equations and diagrams but otherwise the format is good.

What kinds of problems are they realistically able to solve together in breakout rooms, given the technology limitations?  I was thinking I might do 1-2 really open-ended modeling exercises this way in a few weeks (there's a website with some ideas I can steal), but it doesn't feel like they could do this with their textbook problems.  Those are almost 100% paper-and-pencil calculations and graphing.

[mamselle]

A friend just suggested (for my music theory issues, which are similar) opening something like MusScore (which I have and use; it's similar to Sibelius) and sharing that the way one does a PowerPoint file.

I'm going to check that out to see if it can be changed while open, which answers the need for drawing even, parallel staff lines, etc.

I'm imagining something similar might exist for drawing graphs online, that's interactive, in which case, you might (?) be able to open that and do the graphing as you go.

I wonder if (as a clunky alternative) you could open an Excel page, enter the coordinates and show the graph as you go that way as well (although I know from trying that Excel is not great with entering formulas and having it get those graphs right the first time..!).

But the math world is probably streets ahead of the music world in this, so I may be talking about old, old problems, that are already solved. 

M.

[mamselle]

Updated to add: I used MuseScore for a theory lesson today, and it worked!

'Way cool!

M.