I had so much fun working with a teacher on an end of year project using Do Ink which is a green screen app. Before I start this post, I want to say thank you to the teacher I worked with and the IT specialist who helped me understand the Do Ink app. The teacher I planned this project with had her students create posters on a topic and solve the problem using multiple representations prior to telling her about Do Ink. When I presented her with the idea of using Do Ink to communicate their ideas it seemed to fit perfectly with using their posters as the background image and talking points. So, I created a student handout for instructions and processing what students were going to say in their video (we used steps 3-7 of this handout and used the teacher’s original task instead of #1 and 2).

Here is a video (above is just a screen shot) of a student explaining her poster (by the way, this was the first time I had seen their finished products since I came in on the filming part and you will notice a couple mistakes such as step 1 and the graph being quadratic not exponential in this example. When I saw these in the moment of filming, it was a great chance to talk through finding errors and justifying why and how we can correct them before turning their work in. She also is media released so I could post here). Below are some things I learned from the process:

1. If you’re reading this and thinking you don’t have a green screen, think again! All you need is large green butcher paper or a green sheet. Also, double check with the library at your campus…I found out each of our campuses have them and they purchased 5-10 Do Ink apps (they cost about $3 each).
2. Having students write a script before is really helpful. Students felt more confident and were more precise in their mathematical language when they were prepared with what they were going to say. When you are filming this is a great opportunity to hear students process their work, make sense of the math, and communicate their learning. See the student handout that I created for the some ways to help students write before they speak.
3. Some students liked being in the video together in pairs. So we decided one person would ask questions to prompt the other person explaining their poster. For example, one person might say, “what was your topic about?” or “how did you use your graph to solve” etc.
4. I really enjoyed having students learn the app. They had fun playing around with the sizing and position of their videos and it gave them ownership over the finished product. I had several students ask me to email them, not just their teacher, their project…I love that they were proud of what they created!

 

 

 

 

Let me know if you end up trying Do Ink and how it went!

Super Saturday PowerPoint

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