Teaching Sound and Youtube

I’m teaching Sound with both Junior Certs and Leaving Certs at the moment.It was pretty cool to have ready access to these amazing clipsSonic Boom: very useful when discussing the Doppler Effect.As usual there are loads of related clips: Lyre bird imitating a chain-saw.Not sure about the relevance, but this has to be seen (and heard) to be believed.    Finally a quick search for ‘Teaching Sound” brought up some nice ideas here:We need more of this – it’s so easy to exchange ideas. Thanks Mr Noon  

Laptops from €249

This form Dell

Laptop Computer

From €249 plus delivery.

I don’t know the specs but I reckon they would be ideal for working with dataloggers in Science projects like Scifest and Young Scientist, and I can’t imagine they are more expensive than the alternative mobile dataloggers; LabQuest and Xplorer GLX

You would still have to use their software and sensors, but still . . .??

Interactive Whiteboard Video

Ruth McElhone gave a presentation during the CESI conference last month on using the Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB). She mentioned that she had put an instructional video on Youtube but I could never find it until it appeared in Ewen McIntosh’s favourites on his delicious site, which in turn get featured when you sign up to his blog.

In any case, here it is. We have (and underuse) Promethean, whereas Ruth’s presentation is on an alternative called Smartboard. Very impressive nonetheless.

Thanks Ruth

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.

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 . . .

CESI conference 2008

I attended the CESI conference over the weekend.
It was a wonderful occasion. I hope to blog about the various presentations over the next week or so. I have been to plenty of conferences in the past but can never one where
there was such an amount of energy coming from the floor. I think it was helped greatly by the fact that there were so many presentations, and because nearly all of these were ‘regular’ teachers themselves they tended to  stay for both days so there was plenty of opportunity to ask questions during coffee breaks.

The other eye-opener was the number of Primary school teachers. They probably out-numbered us two or three to one. This was partly explained by the fact that at primary level you have more time and opportunity to engage with ICT projects, and the class doesn’t move on after 40 minutes, but still . . .???

The most memorable presentation was from Tommy Maher about what his school got up to over the last year or two.
Unbelievable stuff.

For another day.