Die Hard: The End of Textbook Learning? (VideoSharing Part-deux)

In my involvement with technology over the past several years, I have often tried to be proactive rather reactive. I like to try to move things forward. Much discussion in my previous MES courses with my cohort and instructors focused on how student learning in the 21st century will look much different from the factory model that existed through much of the past several centuries. Chalkboards and paper textbooks are giving way to a whole new array of instructional technologies. With the new generation of my students being digital natives and not digital immigrants(Perensky, 2001), then how my students work and learn needs to change.

My students coming into my CTS classes today represent the broad spectrum of student learning styles and abilities. For many students, they will “best” learn the new skill or task when they are ready to use it. This concept of Just-In-Time learning is borrowed from industry with its just-in-time model of delivery efficiency. Students want knowledge and skills that they can apply today rather than some time in their futures. I see the promise of video sharing to be one way of meeting the needs of my students. When they are ready to master a new skill, they can then watch the video(s), stop it, watch it again, back it up, etc. until they understand the skill. Then they can go out and practice their new skill until they have mastered it.

From my lesson preparations in the past, I have found that YouTube is one place where a number of teachers, students, professors share some of their expertise with a wider audience. The traditional downside with many video sharing sites has to do with some of the inappropriate materials that can also be found on the same share sites. School districts, like Edmonton Public Schools, find the solution to be one of blocking off access to all of YouTube, including the “good stuff”. As an alternative, educators that saw the educational value of video sharing created TeacherTube and SchoolTube as moderated sites where teachers and students could still freely and safely share appropriate videos and in so doing, are building up a vast electronic resource repository with video clips on a range of subject matter.(Avila, 2008)

To move the concept of video sharing forward, several things must come into play.

1. The equipment (cameras, computers) must become more common and easily accessed. Webcams for $25.00 and digital movie cameras for $200.00 are now affordable to the masses.


2. The software must be easy to use, inexpensive/free to make it common to all. Applications such as Windows Movie Maker, Viddler.com are not only free, but also perform as well as many applications that must be purchased.


3. Meaningful applications must be developed and shared to engage students with Sharing best practices with other teachers will help disseminate these practices. One such example is Classroom2dot0, a wiki site.
   
4. Teachers must re-think about how they have their students learn in the classroom by hooking the students into their learning. Video can help do this through greater student engagement and subsequent improved achievement results.(Needleman, 2008)
   

So is video sharing the holy grail to 21st century teachers in the all-inclusive classroom? In so many ways it has demonstrated great potential.

1. First, video sharing can allow anyone with an expertise to share that expertise easily with others. Others can then comment or add to the original posting and together as they collaborate together. This gets my students to teach each other with the teacher now becoming more the facilitator and not the teacher.


2. Second, video sharing can also facilitate a wider audience for my student’s work that is outside of the classroom. Now parents and friends can share in the appreciation of the student’s work. Collaboration can now be done with persons outside of the classroom environ. Many have identified video as an important 21st century literacy that all students should be familiar with.


3. Third, making a good video is no accident. Teamwork and planning, including writing skills and communication skills play an intricate part of a successful video production in addition to technical skills. All of these facets are attributes that transfer into the modern work environment.

The downside to video sharing appears minor in comparison. More users of technology means more equipment required. All schools operate on limited budgets and with a recession now affecting school budgets, I am sure that my program(s) will be affected to some extent. When students are using a video sharing sites, many times these students can be distracted by watching other works that are also being hosted. I need to accept that there will be “down time” when my students may appear to not be on task or working but are watching other videos. Who knows, maybe they may be inspired by another student’s work down the road or benefit from unintended “drive-by learning”.

Mission Impossible: My New Teaching Assignment (VideoSharing Part-1)

August 29, 2009 8:37am
Welcome back Mr. Chan. Here is your teaching assignment for this coming school year. Multimedia Studies 20, Multimedia Studies 30, Financial Management 10, Financial Management 20, Financial Management 30. Oh, the Financial Management 20s and 30s will be in a combined class. Computing Science 10, Computing Science 20, Computing Science 30. Since they are closely related, we will also combine the 20s and 30s. Office Studies 10, Office Studies 20, Office Studies 30. Since there are only a few students in each course, we’ll put them in with your Computing Science 20/30 class. How about we just call this section a ‘dog’s breakfast’?

So what is a CTS teacher with multiple preparations to do? How can video sharing be a possible knight in shiny armour coming to my rescue?



As I started thinking about this blog topic, some of my casual conversations over the past year with my colleagues came back to mind as I assumed my role as Technology DH. How about the use of an electronic resource repository as a means of banking resources that will allow for just in time(JIT) learning? I had dialogued with some of the math teachers to record some of their lessons onto video and then post them onto our school network where students absent from class could go to watch the lesson and/or students could review the lesson outside of class time.

But now as I face my own daunting teaching assignment, maybe video sharing can also help my students and their learning. Students in more advanced levels could make use of web2.0 tools like YouTube or Viddler to easily record clips of video that teach the viewer on how to perform a certain skill or task. For instance, a student in Multimedia Studies 10 might need to know how to operate a particular model of digital SLR camera that they are not familiar with. Now instead of raising their hand and waiting for the teacher to give them a quick mini-lesson, they can now search the repository and watch the short clip that was recorded by a previous student. Screencasting is similar but now a more advanced student can record how to perform a task on a computer and simultaneously record an audio track narration to go along with the visual of the computer screen. Again the video can be saved to the repository and viewed by others. Wow, students teaching students and students learning when they feel compelled to learn. Students could generate their own how-to videos or can link to other sources! With the Web 2.0 tools being free to download and install and a simple webcam or digital video recorder now being affordable, every student can now become a teacher. Teachers are no longer the only ones who can do the teaching.

I came across Viddler.com just by accident during my research into video sharing. Yes, many (free) sites allow you to post your videos and allow others to view your videos. But what really excited me was that Viddler.com seemed to allow you to easily either upload a recorded video file or record video directly to the website! Almost any video file format is supported. Nothing to install on my workstation except the software for a webcam and Adobe Flash 9 player(also a free download). So, I completed the standard registration and gave it a try. Right away, the website detected and activated my Logitech webcam. It gave me the option of what quality I wanted to record in(low/medium/high). Then I pressed the record button and voila, I recorded my first direct to website video. Check out my very first effort!

Uploaded videos can be made either public, shared, or private. Groups can be formed and communities established on this site.

So why did I choose Viddler.com? YouTube also has the same features. Because most school districts still block YouTube but chances are Viddler.com may come in under the radar and not be blocked. Viddler can support a wide array of file types but you are limited to 500 MB per file with no limit on number of clips. YouTube is a bit more limiting on file types but allows for up to 2 GB or 10 min video clips. From the readings that I’ve done, many experts recommend that the clips should be kept short in length anyways– possibly due to short attention spans of many students. Neither YouTube nor Viddler have video editing capabilities so to any post-production editing will require the use of another software. Likely, there are freebies available on the internet but also Windows/Apple computers usually come with a basic video editing program such as iMovie or Windows Movie Maker.

On-line photosharing

Well, its time to crawl out of my shell. Just signed up for Flickr. It is almost as simple as described by Will Richardson in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Just signed up for the basic, free account. It surely won't take too long to use up one's limit for either video or photo. My greatest concern will be whether the district policy on FOIP will allow my students to post materials to Flickr that may include their personally identifiable images of fellow students, etc. Even on our school website, we can't post pictures of students without permission and some of the photosharing sites may not be accessible due to internet filtering.

Anyways, I rant. If you would like to check out my handiwork, follow the link to my Flickr photostream and comment on whether it actually works. JPercyPage Flickr

I really do like the ability to mash together my images with a world map. That is powerful. I am still trying to figure out the concept of annotating pictures which was mentioned in the book by Will Richardson. I will continue to play with Flickr a bit more and will probably post some additional thoughts later this evening.




Came across a great little slideshow illustrating Web 2.0 for newbies!

Web2.0 Slideshare

Oh the fun of new discoveries!! What's next?

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And later that evening,

I've discovered that photosharing is like a swiss army knife -- it can do many things in one neat package. Reading from an exerpt from The British Computer Society, my eyes were opened to how photosharing can be utilized in almost every subject area. Geotagging, mapping, annotations can be applied collectively by a class of students to build something that can be a powerful instrument for learning for all subjects. It can become personalized by all and hopefully they can take ownership of their own learning. Check out this short youtube video on the evolving pedagogy for the 21st century. Teachers need to let go of some of the control that they have had historically over the student's learning.

The tools in Flickr are fairly straight forward but I seem to have hit a hurdle with allowing others access to view groups of photos. When I am in Flickr (signed in), my photos appear in my group section but when I link into the site from my blog, no photos appear? Perhaps I need to see it as another user (ie. sign in)?

Would I recommend/encourage the use of a photosharing site to my colleagues at school? Certainly. Many of the changes in the high school curriculums involve 21st century media and how the many of the tools that are now available are geared towards collaboration at work/school. The fact that many photosharing websites and their associated tools are free for our students to use either at home or at school means that the student can enjoy a seamless learning experience. Will my students and less techno-savy teachers that I work with just jump right in and work with the tools? No, not likely. Many students 'think' that they are computer literate but that usually means they can e-mail, browse, word process (a bit) and download music/video and/or play on-line games. Without meaningful projects and initial teacher guidance, photosharing will not realize its potential as an instructional technology worthy to be in the classroom.

So tell me what you think...

To blog or not to blog...

I will readily admit, I am not a blogger. That is, I tend to be somewhat introverted and therefore, blabbing out loud in public is not the most comfortable thing for me to do. After reading the chapter on blogging from Will Richardson's book last week, it made me wonder about the usefulness of blogging in my classroom. Was there something to blogging that I just hadn't seen yet?

So, a couple of celestrial events lined up to move me onto blogger.com for this first go-around with blogging. Firstly, I just happened to have a gmail account which I seldom used. It also gave me access to blogger. Secondly, Richardson seemed to think that blogger was very easy to use and had some cool tools that you can use with it. Now right here is where I really started to think with my other "hat" -- my DH hat. In my role as DH of Technology in our school, I am constantly encouraging staff on exploring how technology can be used to enhance student learning and hopefully, student success in the 21st century. Students use technology everyday outside the classroom so why not inside the classroom too? We tend to spend a lot of money buying cool gadgets but does anyone really know how to use it? Hence, my interest in this course is two fold - for myself in my classroom but also for the rest of my staff as I provide leadership in the area of (instructional) technology.

Welcome Message

Hello all.
My name is Tony Chan and I am located in Edmonton, AB. I have taught a wide variety of subjects in Junior High and High School over the past 25 years with both rural and urban districts. Just over 7 years ago, a little man named Andrew came into our lives. My son helped both my wife and I to refocus our priorities from being workaholics to something much more civilized.
I have been in the MES program at the UA for the past 3 years now and am finally finishing off my 2 electives this summer (I hope). My last option may or may not be a go due to lack of enrolment at this time. My focus over the past 8 years has leaned heavily towards technology and I am the DH of Technology at my high school in Edmonton.
I am very excited about the topics that we will be discussing and exploring over the next 6 weeks as I tend to be a bit forward thinking and like to try things "outside the box". Should anyone want to contact me in real time, I am on Skype under the name tony_in_edmonton. If you see me on-line, feel free to call me up.I do look forward to our time together in this course. Happy reading!