views on technology integration and learning
Posts tagged video
Reflections on a Year of YouTube and Flipping the Classroom
011 months ago
This past summer, I was fortunate to be selected to participate in a full day of training in screencasting and flipped teaching at the YouTube Teacher Studio at the Google offices in Kirkland. It was a fantastic day of learning and connecting with other educators doing great things to improve learning. Many thanks go to Will Houghtelling, Jim Sill, James Sanders and Ramsey Musallam for the fantastic professional development they offered. And also to excellent new colleagues like Karen Mensing who contributed heavily to my personal learning network.
Often times when we go back to the realities of our regular jobs, the excitement of our new learnings fade, and we don’t follow through with those big plans we had. I was determined to really make an effort to incorporate YouTube and Flipped teaching into my work with teachers this year. Each month I contributed playlists to YouTube/teachers – and about half the time I teamed up with a content specialist to on this partly because I don’t have any specific classes of my own, and partly to promote the use of YouTube. Additionally I teamed up with a fantastic Physics teacher and co-led two 45 minute Flipped Teaching Salons (designed to spark interest amongst other teachers) during a Professional Development day. The sessions were well received by the 25 attendees. These salons were the spark for many 1 on 1 follow up sessions where I worked with teachers to be able to use the tools on their Mac to record instruction then post to YouTube. Two teachers I work with have really gotten into the method. The Physics teacher I mentioned with YouTube channel “druceisp” (although it is still private) has uploaded 294 videos to date, and is completely restructuring how he organizes his courses. Our guitar teacher is getting started on recording EVERY lesson for his beginning guitar classes (tonyackermanguitar). He only has about 10 public at this time, but will be “releasing” them as appropriate, timed with his classes next year. I’ve really enjoyed the thoughtful conversations that have come about while supporting teachers in this methodology.
Wanting to use YouTube to host some excellent, creative, student content, I helped the European Student Film Festival design a channel and get all of their student submissions and “24 Hour Challenge Films” online for viewing by a larger audience.
I also made a commitment to do more screencasting myself. When ever I was asked a question that was best answered by showing, I tried to take the time to do it with a video so that I would have it to use again the next time I was asked. Similarly, when working with teachers on longer projects, such as an interview project in Psychology where the final product was a podcast, I used video to record instruction that could be accessed at anytime, making the instruction so much more meaningful to the various groups of students. My screencasting skills have improved over the year, and I’m much quicker now (although it is still difficult to listen/watch my own videos).
Looking back, I’m so grateful for the training I received at the YouTube Teacher Studio, and thankful for the connections and friendships made. YouTube is an extremely flexible and relevant tool that is easily adapted for use in the educational realm. Screencasting and YouTube are now just part of my daily work flow.
Stop Motion on iPhone
011 months ago
by pgreensoup
in Learning
One of our Apple Certified technicians was having some fun testing iMotion on his phone to make a stop motion video. He showed me the video and I asked him if iMotion does all the transitions and text as well. ”No,” he said, “that was done in iMovie“. I assumed he put the footage onto his Mac and then made the movie in iMovie. But, no. He did the whole thing on iMovie on his phone. And if you can do this quickly on an iPhone, I’m sure it is an even better experience on an iPad. Maybe iPads/iPhones are more of a creative tool than I thought. Hmmmm….
European Student Film Festival
01 year ago
This past week International School of Prague hosted an amazing learning event, The European Student Film Festival, where students attended workshops on story, lighting, music, digital sound, camera work, casting, and competed in a 24 Hour Film Challenge. The excitement about the event is still evident in the hallways this week as students continue to talk about what an exceptional and inspiring event it was. I was impressed by the student creativity and problem solving displayed throughout the festival, and the overall quality of films that were submitted in the regular competition as well as the 24 Hour Film Festival. I’ve embedded a playlist of the festival winners in this post, and here are links to the challenge films as well as the entire lot of competition submissions.
YouTube.com/Teachers
11 year ago
This past July I spent an action-packed day learning about YouTube in the classroom at The YouTube Teachers Studio with fantastic lead learners, Jim Sill, Ramsey Musallam and James Sanders. We heard from Will Houghteling about what the YouTube Education team is cooking up. One of their goals is to find a way to give access of the great educational content that exists on YouTube to the teachers and students in schools where YouTube is currently blocked. They have a number of good ideas in the works. Today they launched YouTube.com/Teachers to support teachers with ideas for using YouTube in the classroom complete with examples and screencasting tips. Additionally teachers can sign up for the YouTube newsletter for teachers and submit their favorite YouTube playlists to be highlighted on YouTube EDU. You can read more about the launch on YouTube’s blog and view my interview below.
Google Teacher Academy
11 year ago
by pgreensoup
in Learning
The Google Teacher Academy is coming to Seattle this summer. Only 50 educators get to participate. I sooooooooo hope to be one that gets invited. There are sure to be opportunities to connect with likeminded educators committed to continually learning, risking, and sharing. I’ve given it my best shot; my application has been submitted and my application video (on motivation and learning) posted online (and below). The waiting begins.
Learning Event Generator
22 years ago
One of the best things I saw at the European Laptop Institute 2010 (Twitter hash tag: #eurolap10) was John Davitt’s Learning Event Generator. In one of John’s sessions he actually used it to get the participants involved. You can check out the Learning Event Generator here, but the basic point is to get students demonstrating their learning in non-traditional ways. Putting students in these situations encourages them to create, collaborate, problem solve and communicate. You get some really crazy permutations which quite possibly will help the learning stick even better. Here are a few examples:
DO how a light works AS a blues song
DO what we know about the brain AS a dot to dot activity
DO what the Magna Carta meant AS a mini opera
My group had “DO how a periscope works AS an animation.” We had fifteen minutes and we came up with the video below. I enjoyed being involved in a creative group process, but more importantly the process made the learning stick – it has been four days since the conference and I’m still thinking about the Learning Event Generator.
