Mathcasts.org

So here is another example of the ways in which teachers can be more imaginative with their curriculum and students can get an opportunity to teach. Mathcasts.org is a wiki that is collecting examples of student produced screencasts about math related topics. Most of these are done with a graphics tablet, but I would think that as screen capture programs become more and more accessible, there might be all sorts of variations on this theme. (Especially, of course, if you have a Tablet PC.)

The thing I like the most here is the opportunity to engage our students by not only asking them to show what they know by testing it but by teaching it. I really believe that is a transformative shift that finally allows us to stop being the sole audience our kids work for. I always tried to find authentic audiences for my students’ work when I was in the classroom, to move the motivation away from the grade and instead to the audience feedback and reaction. We can do this so much more easily now.

Thanks to Tim Fahlberg for the pointer.

technorati tags:Screencasts, Math, Education