For this task, I chose to watch was “Video-Conferencing It’s Easy, Free and Powerful” by Brian Crosby. This is something that I want to integrate into our schools, so I thought it would make for a great topic to focus on for this blog post.

Brian opens up by showing some examples of effective uses of video conferencing, the first of which blew me away. He showed a video of his own class and how they used video conferencing to bring a student with a serious illness into their classroom. She was able to participate and learn from home, and as he pointed out, the students in the classroom learned much about the technology. He further expanded this experience for his students through their classroom blogs.

Video conferencing can bring an “expert” into the classroom where in most circumstances wouldn’t be possible. These conferences can be recorded so students can refer back to them at later date if they have questions. He points out that students produced questions for the speaker and then blogged about the “visit”, again further extending the experience.

Another benefit of video conferencing is that students can gain experience with public speaking and expressing themselves orally. For his students who are behind in their oral expression skills, the video conferencing becomes a big motivator for them to learn the vocabulary they’ll need and how to pronounce it. Furthermore, he uses podcasts of the conferencing as an assessment tool.

Video conferencing provides incredible opportunities for collaboration between classes across the country and even further abroad. I think this aspect of video conferencing is what I’d like to focus on in my district. Teachers (no offense – I’ve been like this myself) tend to work in isolation. Collaboration among students in the classroom is valuable, but connecting and collaborating with students outside of their classroom provides students with real-world, authentic learning experiences and to acquire collaborative skills that can’t be had within the confines of a traditional classroom.

Brian’s tag line is “learning is messy,” which is so true. Any time you attempt something new, especially if it is “outside the box” or outside of one’s comfort zone, there are liable to be bumps along the road or perhaps a pot hole or two, but it’s all worth it in the end.

I will not only archive this session for myself, but I will share it with teachers who might be interested so they can see for themselves the benefits that can be reaped.

Here are my four Youtube “finds”.

This first one is my “how to” video. I enjoy scrapbooking and stamping and I’m always looking to learn new techniques or to find better ways to do a technique that I already know. This particular video demonstrates how to mask when stamping.

My “fun” video is from Ron Clark and his students at the Ron Clark Academy. He was the keynote speaker and performed a little of this song at GaETC. He mentioned that it was on YouTube, so while he was speaking, I looked it up. It just makes you feel good to see kids enjoying learning like these do.

As for two videos that work in my content area (Educational Technology). This first one is title “The Machine is Us/ing Us” and is phenomenal. It’s kind of hard to describe, so I’ll just let it speak for itself.

“Did you know 2.0″ is another fabulous video that has been around for a while and went completely viral. It all began as a power point for a high school faculty meeting and has since been done, re-done, and now animated by Xplane.

I am currently working with an elementary teacher on using iPods with ELL students to assist them with language acquisition skills, especially in Math. She ran across this video, which is such an incredible example of what can be found on TeacherTube as a resource for students. She told me that the kids, 5th graders, loved it.

I have created quite a few instructional videos on “how to” use this application or that, but I haven’t ever published them to TeacherTube. I think I’ve never done it because when I make these videos, I tend to specialize them specifically for teachers in our district. The next time I make a video, I’ll have to keep in mind to make it more general so I can post it to TeacherTube.

I know we have students in the district producing videos that could certainly be published on TeacherTube. I would love to see kids doing book reviews and posting those. That would be a great way for other students to learn about great books to read!

How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways!!
Thou art more useful for finding an incredible
array of images than any other tool.

And I joketh not!

Okay, all Shakespeare references aside, I am head over heels for Flickr! In my previous post on Creative Commons, I mentioned how I have recently used Flickr for a presentation that I did. I spent hours on Flickr searching for those special images that evoked the meaning I wanted and I found far more examples than I ended up using.

Whenever I need an image, I head straight to Flickr. When someone else needs images, I show them the CC search in Flickr. When I see someone heading to the Google Image search, right after I cringe, I point them to the CC search in Flickr. Certainly there are other photo sharing sites out there, but none are comparable to the depth and breadth you find here. Can you tell I love this site?

Since I already spent so much time searching for images in preparation for my GaETC presentation, I chose to use the same theme for this task. Is that cheating? I dearly hope not. In this instance, I’ll call it dual-purpose tasking just to cover myself . My theme is Professional (Personal) Learning Networks and the images that I searched for were those that, for me, represent what my network means to me.

The image below is probably one of my favorites. Most might see a group of people holding puzzle pieces together. However, what I see is a broad cross-section of people who are joining together to connect, collaborate, share, and create something of value that each person can then use.

Not being a classroom teacher (for many moons), I don’t have specific ideas for how Flickr can be used to support teaching and learning in general. I use Flickr in my professional development courses to show teachers a viable option they can use and that their students can use for project creation.

Personally, in my searches for images to use in my presentation, what I have found in Flickr has broadened my view of how words can be represented. It’s always interesting to see the results that I get when searching titles and tags.

One of the more interesting and recent developments on Flickr is the ability to upload videos. I know that YouTube is the preferred method for that, but in many cases YouTube is blocked for schools whereas Flickr is not. This Life in Florida set contains student-created Photostory movies they are sharing with a partner school, which I believe is in either Central or South America. Since most digital cameras these days can also take decent quality movies with sound, the ability to upload movies to Flickr extends the use of the site and opens up other opportunities for sharing digital media.

I know there are many other aspects of Flickr that can be used in education and that I am just beginning to scratch the surface. This perhaps will become a goal of mine to delve deeper into the world of Flickr so I can then develop strategies for incorporating its use in the classroom. To that end, I created a Flickr in Education group in Diigo to help me and others see the educational applications of Flickr. This is our group’s linkroll thus far. If you are a Diigo user and are interested in joining, you are welcome to contribute!

Group Flickr in Education Bookmarks

Flickr logo photo source – Jing Screenshot
Puzzle photo source: Flickr Lumaxart