Making my First Math Video

I've been thinking about the inverted classroom model. There seems to be a few key advantages like getting kids to be more proactive about their own learning and allowing them the ability to rewind or re-watch as many times as it takes for them to absorb all of the important info, but I don't like it as a way to introduce skills and topics. The non-interactivity of monologuing about math for 10 minutes cannot be very effective in activating prior knowledge. Even when I do a mini-lesson in class, I like to call on kids to provide feedback, so that I can make sure that I am pacing the class appropriately for the slower learners of the batch and that I'm clarifying and re-wording parts that may seem unclear to them in my initial description. The other issue is that my kids don't really have trouble recalling simple facts or concepts. It's when they all mingle together that my kids start to get confused. (And although we work out their issues in class, they don't always remember what we did in those n-step problems a few weeks/months later. --Shocking, I know!)

But, I am considering implementing something like this to help kids review the more difficult parts of a past topic or assignment that has already been introduced / worked on in class. That way, they can look through the archive and only tune in to the "episodes" that are giving them trouble. Also, this means that if they do not remember how to do something that's a bit complicated, they can always go back and find a relevant problem and watch the video to see how it was done. (Versus my current model, which is we would discuss their difficulties in class, and who knows how good their annotations are going to be in helping them work out the entire process later on??)

In fact, I am going to begin making a video archive of problems soon. (Why wait until next year to try this out?? March seems as good a time as any.) My one class where kids really need extra review is in Precalculus, and it seems like we're always running out of time to teach new material, that we can only do so much review in class for the material we have already learned/practiced. I am going to experiment with making some videos about current and past topics/problems, and dumping them onto a webpage so that these kids can look them up as they need to instead of always seeking me to re-explain the same things.

Addendum: So, since I'm one of those impulsive types, I abandoned this blog entry midway through and went ahead and tried to make a video last night! The video wasn't half-bad in quality actually, even though holding the camera in my left hand and writing while standing (easier to hold the camera steadily that way, while leaning my wrist on a box) and thinking about what to say at the same time (and trying not to mess up) was quite tricky. In fact, there was a noticeable pause in the video when I had to do a simple subtraction, because I was just so distracted by everything that was happening at once. I also got cut off half-way when the camera ran out of battery, so I had to finish it off in a separate video -- fortunately, it was in a natural break of the topic. But in the meanwhile, if you can take a peek and give me some feedback on the math explanation and/or the format, that would be great! (I have to still work out the technical aspects of the job. Right now, after conversion into Windows Media Player format it is still too big for my taste and makes uploading kind of a nightmare. I tried converting into FLV and it got really grainy and difficult to see the letters on the page. Suggestions??)

Here are the links: Part 1 and Part 2 of how to find domains for combined functions. Are you able to see them on a regular internet connection? (My hope is that they're more or less stream-able.)