Blog #2: Videosharing

Reflections on the process of learning about YouTube

YouTube and I are no stranger to each other. I have been watching videos on YouTube for entertainment purposes for a few years, especially since there is no TV - by choice - in my home. My musical interests have been well served by YouTube: I started listening to the band Ok Go because of their impressive treadmill video; I became a fan of Regina Spektor after noting her Fidelity video was one of the top-rated and most watched; I appreciated the work of Imogen Heap only after watching her live performance layering her own sound samples to create an entire song; and I even have been known to pull up the lyrics for a favourite song in one browser window, the YouTube music video for the song in another window, and rock out to my own private karaoke.

But I've never really looked at YouTube as a tool for teaching and learning. 

Discussion of YouTube vs. TeacherTube for my own personal learning

I considered using TeacherTube for this assignment as I was less familiar with it, but found the content, focus, and layout to be too 'safe.' Other than being surprised by how much advertising there was on TeacherTube, the site was fairly easy to navigate, I was able to find videos of interest (like these Math ones from Mr. Duey on fractions and long division), and as an educator who has spent many hours creating my own worksheets, templates, and classroom materials, I REALLY like the document sharing portion of the site. I am often jumping between computers, schools, professions, PCs and Macs, so having a site where I can safely store and access my own teaching materials is fabulous. However, it was just too obvious how the content on TeacherTube could be used for teaching and learning. 

What I was really interested in learning through this assignment was how this contentious website, this YouTube, could cross over from my personal life to my professional one. With my teaching goggles on, I began to examine YouTube from an educator's perspective. 

Discussion of YouTube in terms off teaching and learning

Obscenity! Near nudity! Offensive content! If this were a guest speaker, they would not be allowed in the school. Is this what I want in my classroom? No. Is this who shows up when you invite YouTube in? Probably. We need to protect our students from viewing this inappropriate material.

Interestingly, coming from this protectionist stance, my local school district has blocked YouTube in the high schools but not in some of the elementary schools. Why would younger students have unfiltered access, whereas more mature students be blocked out? I asked a few teachers about this situation, and the consensus seems to be a question of supervision and bandwidth. 

The bandwidth of the school district can't support large numbers of teachers and students accessing streaming video all at the same time. To ensure that the whole system doesn't crash, potential high-rate users (high school students) are prevented from accessing this potential tool.

Elementary students are rarely unsupervised when using the internet and less likely to be on YouTube. High school students have more unsupervised access, and as one teacher reported, "are more likely to go looking for that kind of stuff." By "that kind of stuff," I am assuming the teacher meant objectionable content. Having worked as a Teacher On call in all levels, this synopsis matches my observations. The elementary students I observed using YouTube were re-watching favourite videos such as Potter Puppet Pals while high school students who figured out how to get around the blocks were searching for wacky items, preferably those that involved their friends or were spectacular in some way. For example, some local high school students were watching this clip (WARNING: physical stunts, not for the weak-stomached) which involved both their friends and physical wackiness. 

Seemingly without any parent involvement, the students who made this video were collaborating, scripting, blocking, performing, editing, and adding soundtrack to their montages. Whether YouTube is allowed in schools or not, students are not only viewing inappropriate videos, but possibly creating them as well. My personal favourite piece of evidence for the argument of whether or not our schools should unblock YouTube is contained in this mountain biking video featuring Mike, another local high school student. See that red building that appears in the background five times? That's the HIGH SCHOOL. This video has been viewed over 49,000 times in a town with a population of around 7,000. 

Students are engaging with technology to create and share, but who is teaching them how to do this safely? I don't know these particular students, so how was I able to even find their video? YouTube, similar to Flickr, has a geotagging feature that allows users to find video based on geographic location. Armed with this piece of information and the names posted in the video, I am now able to grab my phone book, look up this student's number, and ask his parent(s) if maybe they were supervising their son while he was jumping off cliffs.

Other objections to YouTube in schools have focused on cyber-bullying (as reported in The Australian IT) and physical assaults, or 'happy-slapping' (as reported in the New York Times). This bullying and physical assault has always occurred, the only differences now are the ability to record and upload the incident, and the potential scale of audience. These two factors compound the harm to the victim by making the attack public to the world and providing a discussion forum for continuing the violence. 

So, rather than educating students about violence, cyber-bullying, harassment, the public-ness of YouTube and other sharing sites, schools are blocking YouTube altogether. I am at a loss to see how blocking YouTube in schools as a reaction to cyber-bullying would lend itself to fixing the problem. Instead, schools are sending a message: this is not our problem, it does not happen here. And they are sending a sub-message: we are not watching. This blind-eye approach does little to help our students navigate their already tumultuous lives and allows the cyber-bullying to continue to an even greater extent.   

Phew, heavy stuff. I need a little video to cheer myself back up.

Teachers can control the amount of potential filth that comes with YouTube by embedding videos (just as I did above) rather than linking to the original video on the YouTube site. This is a handy little trick I learned this week which allows me to bring videos into the classroom without the wild-card comments section and the Related and Featured videos side bars which often have material inappropriate for classroom purposes. Yay! This is also the approach suggested by Davies & Merchant (p. 54). They extend the idea of imbedding video by surrounding the video with other related materials such as links, photos, and news articles that relate to the topic. Another educator, Jerry Everhart, uses this rich stye of presentation to launch Science units in the classroom (Everhart, 2009). Everhart also reveals how to be able to use YouTube videos in the classroom if the embedding function is blocked: download the video onto a hard drive by using RealPlayer.

Now that I can control the content for viewing, how can YouTube aid my classroom practise? Considering how many schools block YouTube, I was pleasantly surprised to find numerous examples of using YouTube for teaching and learning. I had an a-ha moment when I read about a dance teacher using YouTube for her students to research and learn dance moves (Lepczyk, 2009). Video, the combination of movement and sound, is the only format that would allow the students to explore a world-wide variety of dance techniques. 

To me, an obvious use for YouTube videos in the classroom would be as a "hook." My teacher education program was big on the use of hooks, the introduction to the lesson that makes the students interested and excited about the learning to occur. If the hook is really good, it also encourages late students to be on time as they will miss "the good part."  

Merchant and Davies also suggest that teachers should upload videos "to demonstrate tasks for students so that they can watch at home, or to explain concepts so that they can 'listen again'" (Davies and Merchant, p.64). Woodworking teachers could demonstrate machines to their students, upload videos of the process to YouTube, and have a discussion forum for students to ask questions. Students would be able to re-view the video until they felt comfortable using the machines, and the teacher would be aware of any instruction that needed to be refined based on the number of questions received in the discussion forum. 

And finally, I think teachers should consider student creation of video for school assignments as the process ties so nicely into Bloom's taxonomy of learning. The act of students creating video "positions them as experts and encourages them to become very familiar with the knowledge they need for the film" (Davies and Merchant, p.65). 

Everhart, J.. (2009). YouTube in the Science Classroom. Science and Children, 46(9), 32-35. Retrieved September 27, 2009, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1755933371).

Lepczyk, B.. (2009). Technology Facilitates Teaching and Learning in Creative Dance. Journal

 of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 80(6), 4,8. Retrieved September 26, 2009,

 from ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source. (Document ID: 1838383171).

Baby Camel

Baby Camel
Originally uploaded by one_green_star

I have this THING for baby camels . . .

Blog #1: Photosharing

Reflections on the process of learning about Flickr

To explore photosharing, I chose to sign up for a Flickr account. I had used Flickr in the past to search for photos, but had never taken time to explore the site and think about the uses for teaching and learning. My personal photosharing needs have been met in the past by Facebook and Kodak Gallery. What more could Flickr possibly have to offer?

As with most other popular sites, Flickr was easy to sign up for and, because I already had a Yahoo! login, I was relieved not to have to remember another user ID and password. With speed and a touch of ho-hum, I set about creating my profile and uploading pictures. "But why?" a small part of me asked, "how is this going to make my life better?"

For the purposes of this course, I chose a public profile and used my real name for the account to help classmates and the instructor find my pictures. I also used the same icon as my profile picture on Flickr, Twitter, and Blogger to foster cross-platform recognition. These two choices made me very aware of how public and accessible these photos could be: for students, parents, and future hiring committees!


Discussion of Flickr for my own personal learning

In terms of nuts and bolts, I appreciated the following about Flickr:

• easy to sign up for and start using.
• 100MB uploads per month for free - my 5 un-resized pictures came to 7.08MB, meaning I could upload about 70 photos a month without resizing.
  
• when uploading photos, the screen displayed a check mark for completed photos and a progress bar for remaining photos. This helped me gauge how much time I could spend multi-tasking before returning my attention to Flickr.
• geotagging.

As the video in our trailfire this week explained, Flickr keeps your photos "safe, organized, and findable," and "makes taking pictures fun by making photos social." My ENTIRE collection of personal photos is stored on our home laptop, the laptop which overheats, turns itself off without warning, and will someday soon become useful only as a boat anchor. We back up our files periodically, but I am still haunted by the impermanence of our archive of memories. If I uploaded all our pictures to Flickr, I would take comfort in knowing that our wedding photos are not only on our unreliable storage device, but also 'out there' and findable.

My husband does not like to have pictures of himself or our home publically available on the internet. Out of respect for this, I created a completely private set for our wedding photos. These pictures will not show up on my profile to anyone other than me, but constitute the bulk of my Flickr account.

The more time I spent reading about Flickr, the more I wanted to explore. I have this thing about baby camels, and I was able to indulge myself with 3,772 pictures of baby camels. Scrolling through the photos, I noticed that there were also pictures of wool and knitted items. "Hunh," I thought, "you can make stuff out of camel fur. Who knew?" This was a great example of how Flickr can facilitate learning, where "a tag search will change the context of individual images, showing an image alongside others tagged in the same way and thus reflecting something about the meaning of the term" (Davies and Merchant, p.39).

The photos I did make public were of me eating a huge burger in a vintage joint just north of Spokane, WA. I played around with titles, tags, geotagging, and notes. The geotagging made me curious about what pictures were posted in my hometown and local area, and I quickly realized the beauty of living in a small town: not many pictures geotagged. This discovery made me want to get out and take local pictures with new eyes. I could relate to Davies' discovery that "her partcipation in online communities had an effect on the way she behaved offline and influenced the way she saw the world" (Davies and Merchant, p.43).


Discussion of Flickr in terms of teaching and learning

Pros:

• easy to use for students and teachers
• ability to control privacy settings for photos and groups
  
• accessible from anywhere with internet connection
• no password required to view photos
• can store images for blogs
• segues nicely with the basic tenets of SMART learning
• can be used by those with emerging literacy skills/young learners
• opportunity for student discussion to extend learning beyond photo assignment
• potential global audience
• if a picture is worth a thousand words, educators can quickly convey a lot of information about their teaching practise with each other, creating a vast pool of knowledge
• great for visual learners
  

Cons:

• searches can reveal photos inappropriate for the classroom
  
• all terms, guides, and policies are subject to change without notice to or approval by users
• collection of user information
• site may be blocked in some schools
• easy to get distracted
  

The pros of using Flickr for teaching and learning outweigh the cons. I started to think about how I could start using Flickr for my career, and how my husband, a high school woodworking teacher, could take advantage of my new knowledge too. I joined a group for classroom displays, and another for school library displays. These groups are a much more efficient way to get ideas and inspiration for classrooms and libraries than a general google or bing search. In the future, I'm sure I'll seek out new groups as my needs and interests demand.

For the woodworking teacher, Flickr could be used to gather project ideas. Although no public groups currently exist for Woodworking/Technology Education high school programs, this venue would allow teachers to share information without getting too wordy or spending a lot of time. I was able to find another woodworking teacher, and thus have the potential to add him as a contact and subscribe to an RSS feed of his image uploads. For students, Flickr could be used in woodworking to collect ideas for projects they would like to do, and create a visual diary of their project as it progresses over time, an "online portfolio of work" (Richardson, p.22). A class group of woodworking photos could be sorted by project, or by time elapsed, allowing students to view how they are progressing as compared with other students and what projects are happening in other grades and classes.


Conclusion

For the classroom, Flickr is a much better tool for photosharing than Facebook or Kodak Gallery. Students do not need a password to get rolling and the geo/tagging features allow for the whole world to be shared, catalogued, and discussed. Flickr makes my life better because I can connect with other people who are passionate about the same things to share ideas and discussions. And of course, I can indulge my predilection for baby camels.

Introductory Blog

Hello readers, and welcome to my blog for EDES 501 class assignments. If you’re not in this class and wandered in by accident, just sit back and enjoy all the analysis of Web 2.0 technology and how it relates to teaching and learning. If you were pointedly Googling my name to dig up some dirt – jackpot! You’ll be getting a personal tour of my (crowded) brain. And if you are by some chance holding a burger or other delicious snack, I recommend holding it away from the screen as I am four and a half months pregnant and prone to eating whatever is closest.

I’ve been online since 1994 and have never really logged off the computer since. When talking with dinner guests, I often find it difficult to have a conversation without pulling up a website or program. I am a pretty comfortable user of technology and Web 2.0 tools, but there’s always more to learn and always better ways to use the technology. I believe we’re only getting started in understanding how powerful 2.0 tools can be in the classroom. I also believe that with all the cool stuff that’s out there, nobody can know everything. So I don’t get too stressed when I haven’t heard of something (Gimp?) or am trying out a new tool (Blogger!) because I know I’ll pick it up as I go along. Usually a new tool/site only has my attention for a short time, and if I don’t like it, get frustrated by it because it’s not user-friendly enough, or just can’t see the point in it, then I move along to something else. But if I like the tool, it becomes part of my daily repertoire. So I appreciate that this class is making me take an extended, close look at many of the tools out there.

Some questions I am pondering thus far:

1.) What are the impacts of digital social networks on personal (physical) relationships, if any? Can youth today interpret body language as well as previous generations? Are they comfortable in situations where they have to interact person-to-person? Are cultural norms about eye contact, personal space, spoken conversation, etc. being transferred or is this something we’ll be adding to the curriculum in a few years?

2.) Do people/students today feel more isolated or more connected to their peer groups and communities than in the past? Are online social networks re-defining how we perceive community? Are they blurring the distinction between the roles of “teacher” and “student” and is this as bad of a thing as the media and some educators believe?

3.) I use a lot of Google “products” because, not only are they free, they are easy to use and work well with each other. If Goggle suddenly decided to charge for its services, what would happen? Would I pay? Could schools afford to pay? What are the implications of becoming overly-reliant on one technology or platform?

4.) Why do people like Twitter and will I ever?

5.) As a future Teacher-Librarian, what do I think about Google Books and what does it mean for school libraries?

6.) Blogs extend learning by involving the larger community and making learning more ‘real-world.’ How does my district as a general, overall whole feel about classroom/student/teacher blogs, who is using them in our district, and how are they using them?

7.) How can I be an educational and social leader for promoting Web 2.0 both inside and outside the classroom?

8.) What is Web 3.0?

9.) Is my searchable, online persona appropriate for an educator?

10.) What about the digital divide? How does it affect rural/northern students? The have-not school districts? The students and teachers who do not have a computer at home or access outside of school hours? As a teacher, how can I minimize the effects of the digital divide?

In addition to all these questions, I am seeking to discover my online ‘voice,’ the one that sounds like the inside of my head and reads like butter for the reader(s).

Mmmmm, butter. Time for another snack!

Testing, testing, 1-2-3

Check, check. Is this thing on?