What Elite Athletes Can Teach Us About Self-Reflection

exercising_weights_brain_1600_clr_9217Educational technology can be really powerful in supporting our students in reflecting on their own learning. Last year, I had the privilege of supporting teachers at my school in implementing technology (laptops, iPads, and more) in meaningful ways in the classroom. Throughout the year, many of them started finding unique ways to use laptops and iPads with their students. Seeing my colleagues innovative in this way was so wonderful as it was a great indicator for how comfortable and empowered they were feeling in incorporating educational technologies in their classrooms.

One day, I stopped by one of our Gr. 2 classrooms and witnessed our students using iPads to self-reflect in a way that I’d never really seen before.

Our wonderful Gr. 2 teacher had students creating videos of themselves analyzing another video of themselves reading… What?! That might sound a bit complicated, but it was actually brilliantly simple.  Here’s what they were doing it:

(1) Students first paired up and grabbed an iPad.

(2) They took turns recording each other reading a passage (using the video function on the iPad). Specifically they held the camera over top of the book so their recorded video would show the student tracking their reading passage with their finger.

reading-passage(3) They then exported this reading passage video into the Explain Everything app.

  • If you’re unfamiliar with this app, basically it is a blank white board in which you can insert images, videos, text, etc… and then making a video recording of whatever you move around on the screen (while also picking up your voice using the microphone).
  • This app is a great way for students to explain concepts by making a voice-over video.

(4) Once their reading passage video was on the Explain Everything whiteboard, the teacher and student got together and would record themselves analyzing the student’s reading passage video.

  • The teacher and the student could pause the reading passage video at any point and share things they thought the student was doing well and what they may want to focus on more in the future.

video-of-reading-passage

The end result was a video of each student analyzing their own reading (something that would not be possible to the same degree without technology)!  This is an example of true “redefinition” in the SAMR model and a powerful way that my forward-thinking colleague took a simplistic idea and did something truly innovative to support student learning.

This concept of analyzing a video of yourself isn’t necessarily new, as elite athletes watch videos of their performances all the time in order to improve their skills and understanding.  The concept is somewhat new however in education and is just one simple example of how technology can truly revolutionize teaching and learning!

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