Tech Tip: Using Animation for Sharing Procedures And Directions

"Did you read the directions?"

"Yeah." 

"Alright. What's your question about them, then?"

"I don't get it."

"Which part?"

"I don't know."

How many times have you had a conversation like that? As you can tell from my gif there, conversations like that tend to bring out the grumpies in me.

It doesn't have to be that way!  Making quick videos and animations through services like Xtranormal or Go!Animate are an easy way to introduce assignments and projects or to draw your students into the lesson with something other than your (handsome) face.

Take, for instance, this area problem from my Applied Math book. I like it because it has elements of being open-ended, offers some choice for students, and secretly requires some scale factors and unit conversions.

If students don't read the paragraph on top, this is nearly impossible to do "right."

When my students did this problem 1st hour, I had several "I don't get it," questions - way more than I should have.

I knew part of the problem was that they didn't read the information above where #19 is, and some of it was my introduction of the problem (or lack thereof), so during passing time and our Do Now, I made this video on Xtranormal, essentially just copying most of the text from my book for the character to say. This literally took, about, 7 minutes. (And your students will be amazed.)

Pool Design Problem
by: chuckcbaker



A COUPLE OTHER EXAMPLES:
This one I made to introduce our study of minesweeper at Saturday School to improve reasoning
The Minesweeper
by: chuckcbaker

I set up an "interview" to address FAQs on a logarithms project
Functions Log Project FAQ
by: chuckcbaker