Online professional learning services
YouTube have just announced the release of a new video uploader which, they claim, enables users to:
Good news for heavy users and those wishing to upload more than five minutes of footage.
…And if that wasn’t enough, Google have just launched an audio indexing engine for YouTube. Now you can search a video according to what is said within it and not just on the tags, keywords or title describing it.
It’s in beta at the moment, but will graduate into a fully supported technology soon, I’m sure.
As an update to the previous post, Chad Hurley (the CEO and co-founder of YouTube) has just blogged on the future of online video.
Some key comments:
“Today, 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and we believe the volume will continue to grow exponentially.”
“Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call.”
“In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication.”
“Over the next decade, people will be at the center of their video and media experience. More and more consumers will become creators.”
Please find below a YouTube video B Nesbitt created to “inspire teachers to use technology in engaging ways to help students develop higher level thinking skills. Equally important, it serves to motivate district level leaders to provide teachers with the tools and training to do so.”
Paul Fairbrother and I used it at the most recent IBNA conference in San Francisco. It went down very well with school leadership who told us they will show it to their teaching faculty as soon as the new school year begins.
I hope it helps you too:
Another resource that teachers may find useful is Ustream - a live broadcasting tool which, according to its blurb, “is a platform that provides live interactive video for everyone. Anyone with a camera and an Internet connection can use Ustream to broadcast to a global audience.”
We will certainly look at its potential for professional development, but if any of you are using it with your students, I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks, Paul, for passing this on.
For those of you who enjoyed Michael Wesch’s first video, the Machine is Us/ing Us, you might want to have a look at his follow-up, Information R/Evolution:
It’s a great exposition of the power of tagging.
“Technology is not about productivity”
“Technology is about motivation”
“Don’t consider your own curriculum without first looking at what others are doing around the world”
Three messages from Stephen Heppell to help us frame our understanding of educational technology and curriculum design.
Here he talks to Connected Magazine’s Nicola More about bringing his unique vision of learning to Scotland:
We knew it would only be a matter of time before the IB learning community began to inhabit media sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr. Here are two examples we’ve come across recently - both from YouTube.
The first is a PYP exhibition sample, contributed by students and teachers at the International School of Tianjin, China.
The second example is from a TOK student in the Diploma Programme. We don’t know who he is or where he’s from, as there are no end credits, but we think you’ll enjoy it nevertheless:
With either video, we make no claims as to their adherence to programme requirements. What we do want to do, though, is use them to highlight a number of important issues.
The first is that they’re two examples of students using new technologies to get a message across and show evidence of learning. This is something we will need to come to terms with as a curriculum and assessment authority, and particularly as an awarding body, in the future. Recognising student learning, when evidence of it is so dispersed on the web, will be a real challenge for us in the years ahead.
The second is that they’re both examples of resources which can help teachers in furthering their understanding of the programmes. Discussions around what’s good, and not so good, about them are invaluable for teachers as they attempt to come to terms with programme requirements and continuously improve their practice.
Thirdly, and as a corollary of the above two points, where these examples are located will increasingly be irrelevant. What is important is how we describe them (ie what metadata will we need to establish and use in order to tag these resources?) and how we link to them (ie how can we make use of the semantic web to go beyond a closed teacher resource exchange, such as that on the OCC?)
Something to think about anyway.
It’s surprising just how many people I’ve met recently who still haven’t seen the Machine is Us and Did you know? videos. So here they are. Enjoy!
Please feel free to comment.
