Videos!

Looking through some of the video sites today brought me back to my teacher days of sorting through online resources — many were low-quality and not that useful, but occasionally you would find a gem. YouTube and TeacherTube have a lot of videos that aren't that useful to the classroom. Even the few I watched from the Top 100 YouTube videos for the classroom were of questionable value. However, I bet if you search carefully enough, you will find some gems. I also took note of one of the articles we read that said that YouTube's "value lies less in the content itself than in the networks of learners that form around content and support one another in learning goals".

I enjoyed the iCue site. It is intended to be used as an educational site so of course it is more immediately useful to teachers. The site is very easy to navigate and is comprehensive.

For the classroom, I think many of the videos found on any of these sites are good as introductions to a topic or as review. They can be an effective way to get students thinking about a topic or excited to learn more.

I am not as sure about uses for Primary Source and I would love to hear others' ideas about this. We already use Vimeo, I think, when we post short videos on our web site. It's excellent that we can post video without using our own bandwidth. What ideas do other people have?

Networking and More Networking

It still feels intimidating to me to "join" online networks. All of the sudden you are part of a group! As soon as I get that first Welcome! email, I feel a slight twinge of panic. I know this is ridiculous, but it is true.

Anyway, after joining the Global Education Collaborative, getting welcomed, getting invited to two meetings, and having a slight panic, I looked around some more for other networks. I didn't join another one yet, but I enjoyed looking around at the Teaching Digital History site. The site "is focused on ideas and resources for teaching using digital historical resources" and it was started by a professor at North Carolina State. Maybe some of you have already checked out this network? It appears to focus on American History, and it looks like a site that our teachers should know about. I would love it if someone else would take a look and see if they think it is worthwhile.