Beyond School

I really love Screencast-o-matic (SOM), the free, web-based screencast creator. I’ve been using it to make short edtech tutorials for teachers (who aren’t using them, of course) for the last week. But this Saturday morning, I used it for my students in AP Literature.

A few days ago, I had them do a timed writing of an old AP Lit essay question under exam conditions–40 minutes to read a challenging poem and write an essay that could make or break their opportunity to get college credit for our course.

Many students had a hard time with it. Many didn’t manage to write more than half a page, hand-written–two small paragraphs–for the assignment. (The poetry essays are apparently always what they do worst on in the real AP exam, which is why we’re starting the year with six weeks of poetry.) So I did the assignment myself, with headphones and mic on, talking through each stage of my own approach to taking timed essay exams on poetry.

I’ll share their feedback on the value of this as a learning tool as soon as possible. Here’s how it looks (but you really should take a glimpse at the AP Lit channel on SOM itself, because it allows comments, time-stamped notes, downloads, and more. It’s awesome!) :

Part 1: Attacking the question, annotating the poem:

Part 2: Writing the essay (part 1)

Part 3: Writing the essay (part 2)

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

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