I read a post from Kirsten Winkler, on her Disrupt Education blog, where she discussed an emerging tool called Grockit Answers. The site (still in beta version) allows public instructional videos to be annotated with comments and questions at specific time markers. It reminds me of soundcloud, but for informational videos.
In the classroom, I could envision asking students to create a video showing how something works, or sharing new insight into a chapter or section they had read. Students could then share their video, and the teacher could have other students ask questions on that student's Grockit video.
What really interested me was a different link to one of Kirsten's other blog entries, which highlighted a website entitled MentorMob. MentorMob is a site which seeks to filter out incorrect or bad information regarding popular searches, and condense the best answers into a handy slideshow. I'm averse to getting a twitter account, but apparently that is the only way for you to request for a MentorMob account (you have to follow them, or tweet about MentorMob to a friend).
I remember during long-term sub job where I led students through a project where they were to identify 5 questions and answers they would include on a powerpoint project. The students didn't necessarily struggle with coming up with answers/facts, but they did struggle with coming up with proper questions. Many students moved on to opinion questions, or questions that are currently unanswerable (may favorite was, "Are Ghosts Real?"). Using MentorMob would have been a good tool to help lead students from one of their subject interests into finding those hard-to-reach questions.
Answers aren't hard to get on the internet. Are the correct questions? I really like the idea of Grockit Answers, and the way it can show students how to properly ask questions of deeper meaning. One of my favorite Grockit videos is here. It shows information about the credit crisis, and the questions and answers annotated to the video make it that much more informative. Teachers could even post their own informational videos, where they themselves could post annotated questions. Students could then have the choice of giving answers, or asking more questions on the video.
I still have to sign up with twitter and enter MentorMob, but the articles I read about it excites me. I think it could be a useful tool in the classroom, however I just don't know all the particulars about it yet. I'll hopefully have more to write about it later.
Never mind the twitter account for MentorMob. You can choose another option to request an invitation. Hopefully I will get it soon.
ReplyDeleteWow Joe, this is really interesting! I can completely relate to your experience with having students create deeper meaning questions. When I student taught, it was difficult to have students move beyond surface level questions when they were required to create the questions themselves. Often times we would create questions through class discussion as I would model a surface level question versus a deeper meaning question. I think, while discussion is still wonderful, Grockit would be a wonderful interactive tool for students to use in the classroom to help develop those critical thinking and questioning skills. Great find!
ReplyDeleteThat's good you don't need the Twitter account. That means one less plan to log-into! I really like the idea of sharing your questions/thougths at a specific time stamp. That can really show someones questioning skills. I think we all know it's difficult to get students to create deeper thinking questions, instead of the bare minimum YES or NO questions. Nice one Joe.
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I actually put out Grockit on my twitter account! That is really a neat tool - I could see using that as an advanced organizer to something that I was going to discuss in class the next time. In fact, it is just the tool I was looking for - sort of!! Thanks for sharing --- please post the links to these on our class wiki, others would enjoy too!
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