Pedagogy First!

Week 11- YouTube and Videos

YouTube is an excellent tool to introduce or to review a lesson. Most important, I have noticed that students’ attention and retention increase since most of my students are visual and audio learners. A picture is worth more than a thousand words, but a video might go beyond that number. For ESL students, a video might help them an image and sound so they can have a better understanding of the concept. For instance, I have used songs from YouTube as a way for my students to practice pronunciation and to expose them to the American culture.

As mentioned on my Week 3 blog, ProProfs.com offers brain games, quiz builder, and flashcards that can be embedded on a website or blog. One of the features that I really like is that you can add pictures and Youtube videos to the quizes. Besides, it has an online tracking tool. Visit the following link to take the online tour:  http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/tour.php

Week 11 - YouTube and friends.

I guess after Richard’s post that linked to the differences between YouTube and Vimeo there is not much more to say. Vimeo looks much more professional but so far YouTube has a much bigger number of videos available. And to me, this means saving time in finding what I am looking for. On top of that, YouTube has channels created by Italian sources like the public Italian television (RAI TV), and in this case the uploads are in HD. That means a lot of real culture I can bring in class. I think I use YouTube in almost every single lesson I have. From the review I read it looks like some videos from YouTube are more difficult to download but I have never had problems downloading.  And I use just the easy Keepvid.com website.
Another problem that I encountered in Vimeo is that I was not able to skip immediately to the middle of the video unless the buffering was done, unlike YouTube where I can save a lot of time by jumping to the main part of a clip if I don’t want to see it in its entirety.
I also saw that Vimeo is supposed to be much stricter in terms of uploading copyrighted material. So I thought that Italians would be a good test for this policy. Looking into something Italians uploaded I immediately saw short clips from TV newscast or TV series. I guess that even if Vimeo is smaller and they have a stricter policy, it is still difficult to enforce it. I did find some good videos I can use in class.
About podcast for learning Italian, iTunes is a great source. You can find many free podcast to download and listen to. Some of my students like it a lot.

Videos and podcasts (Week 11/Cohort 2)

YouTube has some advantages. The most important will soon be its captioning feature, and its new ability to record from webcam is pretty cool. They're clearly aiming to be the one-stop shopping video site.

It also has its disadvantages, the biggest of which is that it is Google. If you have other Google accounts, but a different one for YouTube, it logs you out of your Google stuff when you log in to YouTube. This is rotten. Also, it checks all the video for copyright, seeing if it looks like anything produced elsewhere:


 So far it just tells you if that's the case. Of course, they can also take down anything they want.

Vimeo is easy to use -- it's what we use for the POT videos. Limit on a free account is 500 MB a week, but the quality is good and it lets you customize the opening screen.

I've tried blip.tv, and it's good too. The video can be very large. Here's an example of a tutorial I posted there: http://lisahistory.blip.tv/ . Sound quality is excellent, at least for a slideshow.

As for podcasts, I'll confess right here I'm too impatient to listen to them. I do record my lecture audio, though, in .mov format. Then I use iTunes to convert them to mp3 and load them together into a zip file that students can download so they can have my lectures as a podcast if they wish.

But for History there are several:
BBC History Magazine Podcast 
History Podcast Network (a blog full of podcasts)
There's even a "History According to Bob" podcast

Needless to say, anyone with a microphone can make a podcast, and I'm not going to listen to hundreds of these looking for the good ones. I'd rather make my own!

That said, I don't know how many of our students actually  use iTunes to subscribe to them, so I haven't yet gotten into the subscription aspect, only the recording. Do our students subscribe to podcasts?

Weeks 10 and 11

Greetings Pedagogy First Writers!

I apologize for falling behind on our weekly prompts. To atone for my sins, I am posting two weeks worth of material for this week so that we can catch up with things and finish our sequence by the end of the semester.

As you add your posts on these topics--please designate which week you are responding to--this will make it easier for you to organize your portfolio at the end of the semester.

 

Cohort 3

Week 10: Resources Online

• Explore online textbooks and e-books at sites like Project Gutenburg and open textbook.
• Search and find a good educational site in your discipline, something with animations that you can use.
• Write a blog post about your findings.

Week 11: Podcasts and Video

• Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos, such as blip.tv or Vimeo.
• Discover some useful podcasts about teaching or your discipline.
• Blog about what you learned.

 

Cohort 2

Members of cohort two should be reporting on their progress implementing ideas from last semester and providing feedback and support for cohort three members and each other

Week 12 - Videos and Podcasts

I am already quite familiar with You Tube, it has became an almost indispensable tool in all my classes. I started to set up a channel of my own once,  where I would save all the videos I find and use, but I lost interest at the time. However, I know I have the option to do so in the future, to save relevant videos and then students can access the account. Vimeo is for people who are creating their own content, like POT. If or when I start making my own videos for my classes, or have students make videos themselves, I can see where Vimeo would come in handy. As I have scoured you tube for stuff to show in class I have found many student made videos, group assignments where students act out scenes from history or books they have read. This seemed like a fun thing to do and something I might to in the future. Vimeo or You Tube would be good for this.

I've never got into podcasts for personal use, but when I was an ESL teacher I used to use them all time as listening assignments, especially from NPR and the BBC. Looking around for pedagogical videos or podcasts I stumbled upon TeacherTube.com, which I did not know about. This is entire website made up of teacher made videos, PowerPoints, lesson plans, podcasts, docs, a whole lot of great stuff. I came upon the site through finding this video - http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=145960 on Feedback strategies for Distance Learning (that for some reason I can't post the live link). I liked this video because I believe we can have all the bells and whistles in our online classes, but if we don't provide proper substantive feedback it is all for naught. 

I found this interesting video http://www.vidoemo.com/yvideo.php?i=N0piYTVIcWuRpc1dEc0E&teaching-world-history-through-popular-culture= (posted in the diigo group) on Teaching World History through Popular Culture, where student find historical references in everyday culture, write something up about it, and then turn it in for a point. The students in the video seem 8-10 graders, but it may be something doable even for college students. The website where the video is posted, http://www.vidoemo.com. VidoEmo has many more pedagogical videos as well. 

The links I used here I placed in the Diigo group for easier use.

K.I.S.S. > Keeping It Super Simple

I do not often go to Youtube. But today I was fishing for html youtubes. I must say there are a lot of rather terrible ones out there. They had errors and were just poorly done. Certainly made me feel better about my teaching. : )

I did find this one that was much more well done. Looked like the person creating the youtube was about 12 years old, and he had a lovely English accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFuaPH7_LcU&NR=1

This one was quite nice. but it is long. It did also mentioned XHTML, rather than just using oldstyle HTML coding. However, it did cover some of what I would think was unnecessary information for a beginning user.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfBvTsF3fqU&feature=related

Again, I felt like I did not like the way they presented the material. Maybe it is time for me to create my own video series. I have been thinking about it, so stay tuned.

And then there are the ads at the beginning of the tutorial - oh dear this one had a hand held camera. Frightening. And yet amusing. It made me laugh. But it had a lot of hits. Oh no - using the center tag - dreadful. Hacker coding. And they are using caps. No good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyua6bw-wCQ&feature=related

This one used the center tag as well. These people need to refresh their html coding information.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOfhmzNLWzY&feature=related

Now I am moving on to podcasting. Hopefully with better results. Although the first site offered educational podcasts with no clear list breakdown.

I am sure I can find some though....

I have found a few podcasts about html and effective website building.
I must say they certainly took long enough to get to the point. Planning and goals. If you are serious about your website you need to plan ahead. I agree with that certainly. Please write your goals down. Don't let your passion over-run your good judgment. Hmmmm constructing a brick and mortar building with no nails. Not sure on that one. KISS - Keep it Super Simple.

http://www.effective-website-secrets.com/

http://www.effective-website-secrets.com/podcasts/001-effectivewebsitesecrets-091505.mp3

I agree with them on the last part for sure. Rather than a negative Keep is Simple Stupid -- the Keep is Super Simple -- is a keeper of an idea. Start simple and build from there. And that is what I will do with this post. Simply put it up and come back with more info later.

I went back to Jim's post to hit up Vimeo. A good experience. There were some very interesting quick videos about design and website building. Perhaps a bit over the top, but a good push to the future

http://www.vimeo.com/groups/fowdnyc2009giveaway/videos/6343398

A show experience. No verbalization (no tell). Just quick overall views of how to create the separate components that might make up a website or logo. I like that they showed how a website might be made by using pieces from several programs. Not just one stop shopping. This encourages broader creativity.

Week 12: videos and podcasting

Even though most Spanish language textbooks provide good cultural videos and podcasts of native speakers conversing, the videos often fall short of providing students with examples of the specific communicative competencies (and body language) for which they are responsible in any given chapter. A few years ago before I started to teach online, there was no way I was going to do it unless I could find existing videos online to supplement the textbook. At first I panicked and thought I was going to have to produce dozens of videos and podcasts to be able to teach effectively online because when I searched for good videos and podcasts made by other instructors, what I found were A LOT of boring grammar explanations. This wasn't exactly what I was looking for since the text already provides these. Still, I did find one young chap who incorporates communicative bits into his videos and the students really enjoy watching his explanations. Here is his channel.  http://www.youtube.com/user/tontitofrito

I ran into the same problem with online language learning site audio podcasts and on vimeo: too many grammar explanations and not enough simple language used in context. On vimeo, I also found that a lot of students, mostly high school, are posting assignments there, but their pronunciation and flow is often poor and they contain mistakes. It's cool to see how high school teachers are having their students post their work on vimeo, but most of it is of no use to the students in my online classes. They are, however, useful to me in that they give me lesson plan ideas.  :-)

While my best resource for online videos of Spanish speakers conversing in context is youtube and new videos appear daily, I've been recording my own videos little by slowly. I haven't been able to post them as required material yet since there is still no free service to subtitle in Spanish so they are compliant with accessibility regulations. I need to subtitle them myself and haven't had the time nor the know how to do it in a way that they be available only upon request and not there all the time. I would prefer that students practice their listening comprehension without them on all the time. 

The video resources online have saved me in instances when I needed to complement my online classes and did not have the time to produce something myself, but I'm never satisfied with them and it seems like I'll always be working on the time-consuming task of producing and improving my own.

I'm exhausted just thinking about it.  :-0

One step at a time, content, organization, refinement, perfection... I think.

Video and podcasting really fits into what I want to do in order to perfect my courses in the future. This is my fourth year teaching and I am just beginning to trust my on site lectures enough to believe that I am conveying the information in an organized and efficient manner. That has been my goal since I have begun teaching, to build the foundation. Through this process, however, I have continued to step out of the content oriented approach and have tried to integrate videos, powerpoint slideshows, music, etc., basically a creative addition to what I am already attempting to master it. Everytime I try, however, I am uncomfortable and insecure with it. For example, integrating scenes of John Adams, when discussing tar and feathering during the American revolution, or playing a modern hip hop beat and reading Langston Hughes poetry when covering the Harlem Renassaince, discussing technology and its impact on the workforce during the industrial revolution and playing Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. All of these are very interesting, yet I have not perfected them. I once asked Lisa what made a great history teacher, and she replied that most teachers say, it is, organization. That has become my problem with these ideas, I have not orgnaized my presentation enough to be able to integrate these tools into my classes yet.

I do not podcast, but I do record some of my lectures and post them online with material that I was unable to cover in class. I have outlines that I pass out in the beginning of class that cover key terms of that particular night. In order to not discourage discussion in the class, whatever I do not lecture during the class session, I will post the rest of the outline online in an audio mp3 (I have just begun this approach and I would like to know what everyone thinks about posting the rest of a lecture online). In time, I would like to record my lectures, intergrate images, videos, etc, all within one show for each lecture. That way any material that I miss, I can edit it and post the rest of it online.

Or, what I have dreamed of, is have them listen to the lecture during the week before the class meets, or watch the lecture, complete the readings, then use class time as a much more integrated approach to the material that they have read and listened to. That way we can discuss the readings, the lecture and any other material that was already covered in the week of preperation. In class we can create role plays, debates, film clips, and focus on discussion, which allows the the historical facts come alive. In my experience (and it is minimal), when they already have the historical facts in place, it is much easier to uncover significance, themes and analysis. If they do not, I am there to answer questions and refine those thoughts when needed. Is this too idealistic? Maybe...

In any event, vimeo and blip t.v. seem great to be able to achieve these goals. I have never thought of going public with my lectures, so while I listen to lectures on itunes and other podcasting formats with great regularity (they have wonderful podcasts and philsophers, literature and other forms of inquiry that you can download them from itunes for free), I would like to lecture and create a slideshow with each lecutre and simply use them within the class. The difficulty I have, as mentioned above, is that I have not perfected my presentation. The content, themes and approach is where I want it, the organization is not. When it is... radical.

Thoughts on video and podcasts

YouTube

YouTube has been a boon for historians. Not only are there clips from films and documentaries, but quite a bit of primary footage has been put online.

I created some playlists (the one for history seems to have this url), and then made a channel, but didn't really understand what that means. There are so many sites where there's a difference between what you see when you're logged in and what you see when you just get to the page. Youtube is especially strange in this regard.

I haven't used YouTube much for my own stuff. The only one I have posted is this screencast about grading essays in Moodle:

Blip.tv

Some people recommended blip.tv, so I posted my Guide to Historical Thinking there just to try it. It's kind of cool because it has a choice of players for embedding:

I posted one of our Getting Started Teaching Online videos there, but then switched to Vimeo.

Podcasts

I listen to a number of podcasts on educational technology:

http://edtechposse.ca/ -- The EdTech Posse out of western Canada made up of leading educational technology profs and researchers

http://edtechtalk.com/WomenofWeb2.0 -- Women of Web 3.0 is a group of educators who host a podcast with great guests about using educational technology in class

This last is part of EdTech Talk which has many other podcasts and conversations also.

I haven't gotten into making podcasts, though I know some history profs do. They essentially create a little radio show for students to get through iTunes. Perhaps I could do this someday, but I think I'd rather head toward video.

My current thoughts on instructor-created video I love the idea of talking head video embedded into a screen that shows a slideshow. I just saw a good lecture on facilitation that was "webcas" using something called MediaSite that shows the speaker and the slides at the same time. I think if we are going to do presentation, we should use something like this, or at least something like Adobe Connect that embeds our talking head.

Week 12 - Podcasts - Audio and Video - Channels and Comics

I have heard of people recording podcasts as audio (e.g., radio shows), but I have also read that a podcast could mean video.  As I got started this week, I wanted to truly understand why the word "podcast" was used to describe certain digital media files.  I went to Wikipedia's "podcast" entry and found that, according to Wikipedia, part of the reason a podcast is a podcast is because of how it is accessed through the internet.  Podcasts can be audio or video.  I then decided that I wanted to explore both for this blog post.

I have been to YouTube before, so I went to Vimeo because this is the site that the Program for Online Teaching has used for posting videos from the mini conferences and the such.  I have the Program for Online Teaching Vimeo channel on my RSS feed reader, in fact.  I watched a few videos, including short films and other videos that are not on the POT channel, and found that many of them were well-produced.  I enjoyed how the description of the video provided by the person who posts the video appears in large text under the video window in a gray font.  It was appealing to my eye.

My next stop was revisiting a podcast that is audio, not video.  I listened to the podcast called Learning Through Comic Books by Beth Fertig (through WNYC) last semester.  I was excited to revisit this audio podcast.  I had originally found it when I was doing research as a preschool teacher for a project that had to do with comics and heroes.  Since this has to do with a way to teach children literacy that is not necessarily the most common method, I thought that it would fit well in Pedagogy First!, too.

Overall, I am glad that this week gave me an opportunity to visit Vimeo and revisit the idea of audio podcasts as learning tools.  The nice thing about the audio podcast I found is that it also contains the transcript so a student could read along.  Soon I might teach a course in which this podcast could fit in terms of content.  If I do, I might have students explore this audio podcast in some way.