May 10, 2009

Make those You Tubes!

Hi and happy Spring (in the northern hemisphere at least). One person recently thought I was Australian---a great compliment. I remain, though, a happy citizen of Obamerica, and committed to making school better for students here and around the world.

I call your attention to a new article, Make Those You Tubes, just posted on my Website. The lack of sharing of classroom successes among teachers is becoming a bigger and bigger barrier to moving forward, because those who share more learn more quickly.

While the younger generation shares readily through Web 2.0 and social media, the older generation is much less inclined to share, not just because they were taught to "keep it close to the vest," but also because of lack of knowledge of, and inability to use, the tools.

But with You Tube and Flip videocams (and, of course cell phones that take video), the latter problem, at least, has been solved. Now all that has to happen for sharing is for a teacher to ask a student to point a video camera at them, and for the teacher to say, in 30 seconds, exactly what they typically tell me in person: "I'm doing this really exciting program where we...". Add two students talking and a shot of the classroom, and you're ready to post (which the student can also do) Total time elapsed: 15 minutes tops.

If every teacher made and posted just one of these, we'd have millions of successful things to look at. So please--Make Those You Tubes! We'll all learn so much faster!

Best,
Marc

Posted by Marc at 04:51 AM | Comments (26686)