WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
That I don’t like giving homework is well documented on this blog. A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit the International School of Toulouse (IST), an Airbus-funded school which has had a 1-to-1 laptop programme for around 7-8 years. Students there are assigned homeworks far from the ordinary type served up in the average school. Their work has stimulated my thinking…
On returning from IST my thoughts turned towards what I could do in the classroom with my students. The answer, unfortunately, was ‘not much’. Although I did resurrect some old computers, installing Linux on them, there just weren’t the same opportunities. I toyed with the idea of setting homework to watch documentaries and video clips, but ran into a few obstacles:
- The clientele at the school were such that only just over 50% had computers at home.
- Of those who had computers at home, only around half had broadband.
- There weren’t enough computers available before and after school and at breaktimes in school.
- Even if it had worked, bandwidth costs would have been a killer!
Now, however, the situation is vastly different. Not only has society changed, but I’ve moved schools and technology has moved on apace:
- I work in a school with middle-class kids of whom around 99% have computers at home.
- Most have broadband.
- The school has a fair few (though still not enough) computer available at non-contact times.
- Google Video, YouTube, etc. mean bandwidth concerns are a thing of the past!
So this half term, the last one of the year, I shall be setting predominantly video-based homeworks. I’ve shown every class how to construct mindmaps based around the 5W’s (Who? What? When? Where? Why?) whilst watching a video, or I may set them questions to answer.
Of course the most adventurous could use bubbl.us - but that’s a whole other post… 
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I do this a fair amout. I also will burn CDs for kids who complain about having slow access at home. I also have 2 ipods at school that I load TED Talks videos onto and the ymake the rounds as homework. Same thing with audio files (old radio plays, etc.). Very positive response from parents overall.
Numerous times I have heard reports of students 'just' printing stuff from the web without engaging with it as part of their homework. The response normally is asking students to annotate their findings, to show the way they are using their research.
To pre-empt questions about how students are engaging with the video, maybe beyond mindmapping, there are tools like http://www.bubbleply.com/ - for students to annotate the videos with questions, observations or notes?
Thanks for the link to IST
What a great idea, Dan - thanks!
Hi Doug
I would be very interested to hear more about your visit to Toulouse. Have they been successful at full IT integration..if so how? or is it (I hate to say it) a glamourous cut and paste device?
@Clarence: the iPods come back in one piece?!