Webcam Research Helps Kids Improve Reading Fluency describes a research project where students were taped when they were having their reading fluency assessed. According to the study, their ability to see themselves read resulted in improvement.

Certainly any strategy where students can see for themselves the progress they make over time can be a very effective confidence booster and a useful formative assessment tool, and I write about that in my upcoming book. The report, though, seems to say that all of the student’s improvement could be attributed to the Webcam recording, and not to anything else they did in the classroom. If I’m reading it correctly, then that seems to be an overstatement.

However, it has gotten me thinking. Webcams are problematic for our schools because of the difficulties of getting software approved to download. We do have reading fluency assessments, though, where students read short one minute passages to us three times each year. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have our Intermediate English students read them using one of the tools on The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English list, like FotoBabble.

Have any of you used video or audio recording in this way?