youtube

Youtube and Education

The excellent Cool Cat Teacher Blog recently posted about youtube being blocked and has given her own top reasons why it is such a great educational resource:

1) Youtube has some great resources.

2) Youtube has valid educational uses.

3) With a rating system (G, PG, PG-13) or even an E rating for education, we could allow this great resource through our filters and filter by rating, not completely blocking the site. Now, we have no choice and many of you have to go home to read this blog post because you cannot see the videos.

4) Humans are deeply influenced by video, particularly those with an emotional anchor in their past. I used a disparate listing of video in the hopes that each of us would find one video that really pulls at our heart.

5) The effective use of video can give us breakthrough moments with our students. I most often find that the use of video has the greatest impact on my student writing of anything. If I can get them emotionally engaged, I can teach the importance of voice.

6) Youtube is something I use a lot in my classroom. Every 20 minutes I like to change the pace to keep attention and focus. (I find youtube second only to unitedstreaming — my favorite for educational videos and documentaries — however it is a pay service.)

Much more elequent than my list, but I hope the two complement each other.

She also includes some of her more inspirational youtube clips, including Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech above. A clolleague of mine has a poster of this on his classroom wall. Imagine if, when asked what it was about, he could immediately call up this clip. It invokes so much more emotion than the words alone.

In the posting referred to above I gave the link to my del.icio.us sites, but what I should have done was linked to my del.icio.us youtube clips specifically. This is only a fraction of what I have; putting all other clips on delicious is a job for a rainy day.
But take it from me; it is well worth the effort for entertaining a ‘supervision’ class – and it’s all educational!

I don’t know how I would pick a favourite, probably the we are all just monkeys clip I referred to in another posting.

This one is just one picked at random. It brings a whole new understanding of Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which no amount of hand-waving in class could ever do.

But she is right; blogging (and commenting on each others’ blogs) is one of the few options we have to do something about it.

Thanks to those who have contributed to far.

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Youtube in schools (again)

youtube 

As every teacher knows, Youtube is blocked in schools in Ireland.

The problem, as I understand it, is that the NCTE have two levels for rating sites; Conservative and Very Conservative.

It’s no that youtube does not qualify for either category and so schools don’t have the option of whether to allow it or not.

It may be possible that with lobbying on our part we can change this.

I hope to contact the Irish Science Teachers’ Association soon and hopefully have something included in their journal to this effect.

Step one would probably involve persuading teachers of Youtube’s potential as a teaching resource. This shouldn’t be too hard – a link to relevant clips on del.icio.us perhaps?

Step two would be building up a list of interested teachers and/or subject areas.
I guess this is as good a place to start as any?

If interested please leave a comment and perhaps a link to a favourite youtube teaching clip.

Chain Reaction part 2 – Rube Goldberg machines

One of my very first blog posts was about a Chain Reaction project which I carry out with Transition Year students.

The technical term for these things is actually Rube Goldberg machines.
From Wikipedia:

A Rube Goldberg machine is an incredibly overengineered apparatus that performs a very simple task in very indirect and convoluted fashion (thus absurdly violating the principle of parsimony).

I like this too (also from wikipedia)

It has been argued that fissioning uranium to boil water under tremendous temperature and pressure renders nuclear power a Rube Goldberg machine.

One of these was featured recently on youtube:

I continue to believe that it’s a wonderful way for students to carry out project work, and I would certainly have no problem employing this guy as an engineer ahead of someone with similar qualilfications but higher grades.

There is even a Japanese Championship involving these contraptions.

Apparently learning can be fun after all . . .

Battle at Kruger

 Watch as a baby buffalo is caught in the jaws of four lions, then acts as the rope in a tug of war between the lions and some crocs, and finally gets rescued by her extended family.
Simply amazing

Was I the only one rooting for the lions?
I say that a baby lion is cuter than a baby buffalo and on that faultless logic I won’t sleep tonight for worrying about what happened to the lions.
They  have to eat too you know.
 
There are of course some who would suggest that animals getting eaten alive is the sort of thing that goes on every day when Disney isn’t around.
We have a name for these nasty people – we call them scientists.
In an ideal world they are responsible for seperating fact from that which we wish to be true.
Here endeth my sermon.
Go in peace.
🙂

Internet Safety competition

I’m not tech guru, and I’m still at the bottom of a very steep learning curve when it comes to incorporating ICT into my lessons, but I can’t help feeling a little dismayed whenever I hear people who should know better warn about the dangers of internet usage to the point where you imagine they would prefer if the damn thing had never been invented.

So it was nice to come across details of a video competetion from the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner

“This competition should get entrants thinking about their privacy by considering :·        Advantages / disadvantages of the growing use of technology as a means to recording personal information including the use of Biometrics·        The security that CCTV brings Vs possible invasion of privacy·        Use of RFID (radio frequency identification tags) on products ·        Social networking and the electronic footprints we leave behind·        Are we evolving into a ‘Big Brother’ environment as depicted in George Orwells ‘1984’?  

·        What is the line between legitimate gathering of information and a surveillance society? “

Maybe I’m biased but it seems to be slanted slightly towards the “Beware the hooded monster” side of the argument.

It’s not going to change public opinion or anything, but it’s a nice start, particulary if it engages students. Nice prizes too.

Privacy in the 21st century competition

On youtube