techieMusings

It’s crunch time in AP Calculus! To kickstart our review of tips and tricks going into the AP Exam, I have my students watch a very long “movie” of pointers. These are geared towards the free response section and include me solving a variety of past FRQs. I throw in many calculator tips along the way and demonstrate all calculator work.

My students watch this video over the course of a week; it is not meant for one sitting! In the past, I have not used embedded quizzing because I didn’t know of a way to track statistics over multiple logins. Here is where Zaption came to my rescue!

If you haven’t heard of Zaption before, it is a web app allowing teachers to transform any video into a “learning tour.” Elements such as text, quizzes, discussions, and images can be added to a pre-created video. After creating this tour, teachers share the video with their class and Zaption captures statistics on student viewing (percentage of video watched, answers to quiz questions, etc).

So back to my very long AP Calculus AB tips and tricks “movie.” With Zaption, students were able to sign in, watch what they wanted for the evening, and then hit pause when they had enough. When they went back to Zaption the following day, they were automatically taken to the point in the video where they left off. As a teacher, all of the recorded analytics were cumulative, based on their entire viewing experience and not just per session viewing! This was super helpful for me!!

Another thing I loved about using Zaption was the display of the analytics. Below is a screenshot of the “responses” view. You’ll see that:

• the question I asked is visible
• the place in the video where I asked the question is visible, and I can replay that portion of the video right from my analytics screen
• the choices I provided are visible, highlighting the answer I chose as correct
• a bar chart of the distribution of answers is visible
• responses by student are visible, marking correct and incorrect answers

Zaption Analytics Screen

Sidetone: in the “responses” view, one thing that would be nice is to be able to sort the columns (i.e.: by correct/incorrect or by viewer name). You can sort alphabetically, by student, in the “viewers” view.

So overall, Zaption met my needs perfectly for this assignment. I look forward to using it much more in the future. It was really easy to use – for me and for my students. I will definitely be using Zaption more often moving forward and will recommend to other teachers I work with.

PS – If you are interested in watching my Tip and Tricks: AP Calculus AB Exam Cram Video, I have embedded the YouTube video below. You’ll find a table of contents (linked with timestamps) in the description box (hit “show more”).