Video Sharing (Thing # 19)

I chose to embed a movie trailer called Two Million Minutes. The film is a wake-up call to American educators and students. I find it to be frightening and accurate.

I love YouTube! I’ve been watching it for quite some time now. During the elections it was a great way to stay updated on the latest gaffs of the candidates without having to watch the entire interview. I also watch friends performing music or silly videos my husband finds while procrastinating.

Professionally, I haven’t been able to use Youtube. Now that I know about Zamzar I can!

I have used Teachertube a few times in class. It could be a good discovery/inspirational exercise for students.  However, for instruction you have to spend some quality time searching. I much prefer www.unitedstreaming.com as their videos are guaranteed to be age appropriate and professional. Sorry, I know that’s not very creative of me but when you’re in a time crunch, it matters.

I should mention that unitedstreaming is a paid service. My guess is most large school districts have a subscription.

Podcasting (Thing # 17)

I thought this assignment was going to be a piece of cake! I already stream NPR & PBS podcasts for my students.  I’ve found these to be very useful for historical analysis. I’ve also lucked into a great series of video podcasts from Annenberg Media. Try www.learner.org/resources Great stuff.

Anyway, after my previous experiences I thought “how hard could everything else be”? Ha!

This assignment has been a comedy of errors and frustrations thus far. Grazr ended up being a disaster for me. I created a playlist and attached it to my iGoogle page. Well, I simply couldn’t get it to play on my home computer. I even had two computer wizards try to help. Nothing.

I’ve now moved to my school computer. Many of the links from Podcast Alley are blocked by Cobb County (NO they weren’t the inappropriate ones!) and my connection keeps timing out.  Then, I had to deal with trying to get certain plug-ins. Well, I don’t have “administrative rights” on my computer which allows me to allow plug-ins or download/install software. Sigh.

Finally I had some success with a few sites. I did find some interesting pieces on Learn out Loud and Education Podcast Network.  One feed was entirely of famous historical speeches. I played one to my class from Daniel Webster as we’re currently studying the Civil War. Unfortunately, the mechanized voice can make even the most exciting topic a drag to listen to.

I’m hoping once our connection speed has improved I’ll have more luck on Skip the Tutition.

Stay tuned……