Hipster teaching
Finding which instructional techniques work best for both teacher and students can be a long process for a beginning teacher. I recently found my direction with a piece of equipment that was around when I was a kid: the overhead projector.
I’ve been teaching now for three years and in that time I’ve gone from being a fresh faced complete novice to a (somewhat) competent educator. As every beginning teacher does, I have experimented with various strategies to find out what works for my students and what works for me but all with varying levels of success.
Enter: AirServer
I learnt about AirServer from a teacher while I was a university student on placement. He used it to project his iPad’s screen to the projector so he could walk around the room and share students’ work on the big screen using the camera app. The students loved it because they could share their work so easily and it was a bit of a novelty to be able to do it in a seemingly magical way. I immediately bought and downloaded AirServer and used it in my remaining placements.
After graduating and becoming a paid teacher though, I rarely used it again. Opportunity didn’t present itself all that often and when I did use it I wasn’t convinced that it was of much educational value, at least in the way I was using it.
Inspiration
That is, until I attended a PD where the speaker used a document camera. The PD didn’t actually have anything to do with ICT but the way the teacher used the document camera really struck a chord with me. Being able to see her model the content was both helpful and reassuring. The fact that she was facing us as she worked made the instruction feel very natural and less like a lecture. Even something as simple as not having to speak whilst facing the whiteboard made a huge difference. It was quite obvious that she was already a master teacher and would have no doubt left a positive impression on me whether she used a document camera or not but I knew I wanted to give it a go for myself.
After researching document cameras I quickly decided that a decent one was out of my price range, particularly since I had never used one and wasn’t sure whether it would become a regular part of my instruction. Bummer. Then I started thinking of alternatives and remembered my iPad. I could use it as a document camera provided I could find a stand so I didn’t have to hold it up with one hand. Sure enough I found a stand that could be bent to face the camera down onto a desk and I was good to go.
To recap, my iPad is placed over the teacher’s desk held in place by the stand, the camera app is open and the screen is sent wirelessly to the computer via AirServer.
I’ve been using this setup in my lessons now for nearly 2 months and it is changing the way that I teach. Not only am I able to model work for students — I know doing it on the whiteboard is still modelling but it’s just easier in a notebook — I am also able to model appropriate bookwork and note taking. I spend less time with my back to the class so there is less potential for behaviour issues and there is less of a divide between myself and the students as there is a sense that we are all on the same page (both literally and figuratively!). Sharing students’ work is much more effective as I am no longer forced to stand over their shoulder with the camera shaking from holding it.
There are other advantages too. It’s quicker and easier to add artefacts to my learning walls now as I can pin them up straight away instead of having to print off specific slides from a PowerPoint presentation. Also, because it’s an iPad, I can quickly switch between using other apps such as timers and name selectors. I can even record video of what I am teaching and share this with other teachers or upload it to my class Padlet for absent students to catchup on what they missed. And when I’m done using it as a document camera I take it out of the stand and use it for a round of Plickers.
The more I think about it the more ideas I get and the more it makes me want to be a better teacher. And while I’m sure using an iPad or a document camera is not for everyone, I’ve found something that works for me and that makes my job a little easier and more satisfying.
Using a document camera in your classroom? Let us know how!
