Friday, June 19, 2009

Thing #20

I wanted to find some YouTube videos about using Web 2.0 with primary students, so I searched with these words: primary, students, use, and Web 2.0. One of the results was this video narrated by Kathy Cassidy. She talks about how her first graders use blogs, wikis, and podcasts. Her students have blogging buddies with university students and with classrooms around the world. People are encouraged to visit her blog to find out more about how her class does all of these things.




When I started my first wiki, I really did not know what I was doing. Most of my learning was trial by error. I was really excited when I managed to make a video with my school camera, turn the camera's video into a computer video with Windows Movie Maker, and insert the video into the wiki. Success! I couldn't wait to show the kids!

Much to my dismay, what worked on my home computer, did not work on most of the school computers. Only about a third of the class could access the video at home. After all that work! My tech coach suggested that I upload the video to TeacherTube. I'm so glad she did! Somehow, TeacherTube was able to reduce the enormous size of my video and make it into a video that could be accessed by everybody. They processed the video in less than 24 hours.

So here it is, my very first successful TeacherTube video. It doesn't look like a TeacherTube video, because I am having trouble embedding it. It keeps coming out squishy and rectanglular. So I've downloaded it to my computer, then uploaded it to this blog with the blog's "Add Video" button. So it is now a TeacherTube video in disguise. By the way, it actually accidentally tells a story about friendship. The kids pointed it out to me. Watch the smallest chick when the chicks start drinking water -- he stands all by himself until his friends encourage him to come drink with them. You'll have to use your imagination.


Since the chick video is more for remembering than for teaching, I looked through some of the top rated TeacherTube videos to see if I could find something more educational. TeacherTube Videos - Reader's Theater of the Great Kapok Tree (4th grade) would be good to show students before working on a Reader's Theater class videocast.

It is great to have some many video resources. It allows teachers to learn from other teachers and students to learn from other students.

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