3 December 2008

YouTube online orchestra

To all music teachers and musicians out there. Would you or your students like to be part of the world’s first online orchestra?

YouTube are inviting musicians from around the world to audition for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. “Your video entries will be combined into the first ever collaborative virtual performance, and the world will select the best of you to perform at New York City’s Carnegie Hall in April 2009.”

A fascinating development. If there is a school district or authority out there that is still preventing access to this extraordinary site, send them the link.

Posted in YouTube by Lee Davis at 1:00 pm  | Comments (0)

22 October 2008

Microsoft Surface - we finally got our hands on one

Although it’s been out for a while, we haven’t seen any this side of the Atlantic until quite recently, so it was quite a privilege to be able to play with a Microsoft Surface at the Future of Web Apps conference held in London a couple of weeks ago.

I took a few photos and uploaded them to Flickr with annotations.

While I was having a play, my mind was buzzing with possibilities for how it could be used in teaching in learning. Obviously it would have immediate appeal to spatial learners and those who want to ’show’ what they know or have learned. I could also imagine a small number of students brainstorming together, perhaps using some mind-mapping software and working on individual elements of an issue in ‘their part’ of the display/screen.

There are already some great software and applications written for it (check out the photos on microbiology in the stream above and how it renders 3-D imaging) and the list will only grow as it becomes more mainstream.  What’s really important, though, is the notion that it can receive multiple instructions simultaneously through touch - and that makes it immediately appealing for an educational context; even if the price tag doesn’t at US$15,000.

Here’s Microsoft’s original promo video:

And the inevitable parody ;-)

Posted in Teaching and learning by Lee Davis at 2:11 pm  | Comments (0)

28 September 2008

YouTube release new video uploader

YouTube have just announced the release of a new video uploader which, they claim, enables users to:

  • add a video’s metadata (title, description, tags, etc.) while the upload is processing.
  • upload multiple files at once, without downloading a plugin.
  • take advantage of increased file-size limits for uploads - raised from 100MB to 1GB.

Good news for heavy users and those wishing to upload more than five minutes of footage.

Posted in Video by Lee Davis at 9:04 pm  | Comments (0)

18 September 2008

YouTube - indexing of audio

…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.

Posted in Video, YouTube, tools by Lee Davis at 1:48 pm  | Comments (0)

17 September 2008

YouTube - from the horse’s mouth

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.”

Posted in Teaching and learning, Video, YouTube by Lee Davis at 12:18 pm  | Comments (0)

16 September 2008

YouTube. Do you get it?

A typical response to presentations I have given to IB leadership on social media and education technology is, “That’s all very well, but my school district or education authority bans this technology.”

Well, for all those who are faced with this problem, this video by Michael Wesch is for you. It’s an academic’s response to the transformative power of YouTube and why we need to understand it better. It was presented in June this year, at the US Library of Congress.

The video is nearly an hour long, so it’s best viewed with colleagues and coffee (and possibly at home?).

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Michael has published a timeline, which I have copied for convenience below.

0:00 Introduction, YouTube’s Big Numbers

2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams

5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape

12:16 Introducing our Research Team

12:56 Who is on YouTube?

13:25 What’s on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.

17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?

17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and “networked individualism” (Wellman)

18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community

19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation

21:18 YouTube as a medium for community

23:00 Our first vlogs

25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is (“context collapse”)

26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)

27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers

29:53 Aesthetic Arrest

30:25 Connection without Constraint

32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture

34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity

34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio

36:55 YouTube’s Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15

39:50 Reflections on Authenticity

41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System

43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture

47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV’s “The Message” and the message of YouTube

49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World

51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973

52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)

Enjoy!

Posted in Teaching and learning by Lee Davis at 3:11 pm  | Comments (1)

23 July 2008

“Engage me!”

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:

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Posted in Teaching and learning, Video, YouTube by Lee Davis at 11:21 am  | Comments (4)

25 October 2007

Information r/evolution

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:

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

It’s a great exposition of the power of tagging.

Posted in Video, Web 2.0, YouTube, social media, social networking by Lee Davis at 3:50 pm  | Comments (0)

8 October 2007

Searching for the value-added in schools

Berkeley University, in California, have recently launched a series of recorded lectures on their own YouTube channel. You can find the current catalogue here: Berkeley University on YouTube. It clearly mirrors MIT’s Opencourseware initiative, started in 2001.

It raises the question yet again of where the real value in school- and university-based education lies: in the teacher delivering the content or the collaborative working and investigation by students around it.

Clearly, Berkeley and MIT believe it is in the latter, otherwise they wouldn’t be distributing this content for free. It is the formal accreditation and recognition that surrounds it, which they then charge (huge sums) for.

The trend towards deconstructing territories of learning (a phrase I’ve borrowed from a colleague referring to the classroom rather than a geographical region) continues and I look forward to its development.

In the meantime, have a look at this lecture on atoms and heat: ;-)

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Posted in E-learning, Teaching and learning, Web 2.0, YouTube by Lee Davis at 4:29 pm  | Comments (0)

17 September 2007

Lessons from Heppell - part 1

“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:

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Posted in Stephen Heppell, Teaching and learning, Video, YouTube by Lee Davis at 4:59 pm  | Comments (0)
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