The concept of student involved assessment is hard to deny as a powerful learning practice. Students taking care of their own learning and being able to use meta-cognition to dissect understanding and progress and seek ideas and support to learn more. The work of Rick Stiggins and others provides extensive research into this practice as the most important component leading to student achievement.
Whether or not you’ve done any study of this concept, this video does more than about anything I’ve seen recently to support this notion.
Here’s why I think this is one of the best examples of students owning their learning and assessment.
First, the young boy demonstrates what he already knows. Using a simple video camera he models and speaks to his current level of understanding. Second, he identifies what he doesn’t know, not simply by saying he doesn’t know but by offering some suggestions about what might be wrong but questioning his methodology. And here’s where it gets interesting. Instead of him floundering around with the people in his local vicinity who may not be able to help him he reaches out. Reading the comments below the video you’ll see at this writing 10 comments that are very likely going to allow him to learn more. Lest you think this is some obscure example, the first time I viewed this there were only just over 100 views. That’s a pittance in youtube terms. Anyone can get 100 views but that’s all it took for learning to happen. (Note: Since this video was posted, the comments have been disabled, but at the time this was a valuable technique, today I would likely not recommend Youtube as a space to gather this type of feedback)
I do know that a teacher helped him learn this. In fact, that teacher was his mother. It’s not simply a matter of posting a video and awaiting responses, this video was tagged and categorized very well. Without this understanding, it’s unlikely that he would get 10 quality answers. It’s not at all surprising to me that people are willing to share their knowledge and help him out. I experience that every day as part of living in a connected way via social networks.
This represents some of the best ways to help classroom teachers and students understand the power and value of technology. I realize this boy never thought much about what he was doing with technology beyond helping him figure out how to start a fire. As a teacher, it would be very easy to assess his understanding but more importantly, HE COULD assess his understanding and create his own path to learn more. Now, what if all kids did this?
Shoot, Dean, what if all *teachers* did this?
I am currently taking an educational technology class and am looking for blogs out there that can help me integrate technology into my classroom. This student-created video showed me a very powerful way for a student to analyze what knowledege he or she already contains about a topic, to demonstrate that knowledge, and then to use techology as a means for acquiring more information about that topic. I am curious to know what grade level this is and how/where this video was published and made available for others to comment and help him solve his problem. I teach first grade students and could see this being a powerful tool to use for them in completing research projects and involving a greater audience in their research. Thanks for your post!
I blame the end of the year and a week of master’s class for not checking my feed reader for a while. I was knocked back in my chair when I saw this post. That’sa my boy, Nelson.
He made this video last October when he was twelve. He’d been experimenting with the bow drill after watching some YouTube videos on bushcraft and reading Survivorman by Les Stoud. He’d tried, failed, and wanted to improve. I’d helped him to edit & upload a video of him driving our right-hand drive truck on a dirt road, so he was independent in this video except for the uploading/tagging piece. Because he wasn’t old enough to have a YouTube account it was initially posted on my account. He had a response within 24 hours from a man in Sweden, giving him specific advice about putting pressure on the spindle and reminders to breathe. He included links to his own bushcraft videos.
I mentioned this experience to Will Richardson when he presented “How the Read/Write Web Changes Everything” in Victoria in February. This spring Nelson got his own YouTube account, re-posted, and got the comments you saw.
Dean, I love the lens though which you look at the video, and I viewed it differently after reading your post. My own thoughts were that he was flipping the how-to genre on it’s head, sort of a video extension of Ask.com. I would never have thought of posting a video requesting help. Will asked me recently if the answers Nelson got helped him start a fire successfully. Yes, the advice to shorten the spindle and provide air in the hearth appeared to help–that, and more practice.
I asked Nelson why he made the video and he said, “I just wanted to know how to do it.” This was not assigned by a teacher or facilitated by a parent, but I guess we have been doing a lot of modeling about being curious. To answer heather619, the tagging part seems to have been what brought comments, and I taught that, because others had taught me. And another point: I have taught Nelson a bit about thoughtful, encouraging commenting, so maybe there was some reciprocity there.
Final point, and I love this perspective: when I pointed out that he had almost 1000 views he said, “That’s nothing, Mum.” Funny, if 1000 people looked at your art in a gallery, that would be pretty impressive.
.-= Jan Smith´s last blog ..Goodbye! =-.
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