Sam+Hight+(Hillcrest+High+School)

Video Revision Quiz:
I've tried this once and the students seemed engaged by the novelty of the video. It seems that more students than usual were engaged in revision because of this activity. I intend to try it again with my year 10 science class as a means of revising an electricity topic. You can watch my first video [|here.]

Cell Phones:
Whenever an interesting activity or experiment takes place in class I try and capture a few snap shots or some video using my cell phone. I also encourage students to do the same. My hope is that students can show their work to parents and friends and discuss what they did in class. This can have several benefits:
 * 1) Students are taking their work outside of the class so that science becomes part of their lives rather than merely a subject at school.
 * 2) Students will better remember what they did during class because they have effectively repeated the experiment/activity by watching it again.
 * 3) Students and parents/siblings will be able to engage in discussion about student work and what goes on in school so that parents are also aware of student learning and what goes on in class (this can seem scary because we would be more open to scrutiny by parents of students who might not be aware of our purposes in doing some of the things we do, but over all the process would be positive and parents can learn more about teacher methods).
 * 4) I can show the videos or pictures to students to refresh their memories during in-class revision, or students who were absent can see what happened.
 * 5) Students are learning how to realistically and responsibly use their technology by operating it in a supervised situation (the same goes for mini music/video players).
 * 6) Because students are able to use technology that is normally banned, they get a sense of excitement during class. This engages them further.

Some difficulties that have appeared with the use of cell phones in my classes:
 * Some students don't know (or are unwilling to learn) appropriate use of phones in class. This requires policing but is part of learning proper use I feel. Students who regularly abuse the privilege are not allowed to use their phones during class for these purposes.
 * Students videoing or taking pictures of people who don't want them to do so. Again, this requires policing, but students seem remarkably aware of what is appropriate and what is not. More often than not I find students policing this themselves with a considerable social pressure on the offender to delete the media.