TeacherTube

Here are five videos from TeacherTube that help explain how teachers are using Web 2.0 tools in their English classrooms. Let's use this as a taste of what is being done and give us some food for thought about our own classrooms. TeacherTube is a phenomenal resource for us. Unlike YouTube, TeacherTube is educationally oriented and should get past school filters.

The first video is from an English teacher in Barcelona, Spain. His interests are in the emerging technologies of Web 2.0: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Videos as they affect 21st Century Learners. In addition he speaks briefly about Second Life, deemed Web 3.0. The Webheads of Second Life are initiating educational uses for digital learning. One of his biggest points is publishing student work. This of course was the basic tenet of CyberEnglish. Again Web 2.0 is not much different from CyberEnglish.


Graham Stanley, November 2006
graham.stanley@gmail.com
http://blog-elf.blogspot.com

In this second video an English teacher shows how he is using the Blog in his class. Students speak about their blogs and uses. This was produced by Christine, a student teacher in Mr Sheehy's English class. Search "sheehy" on TeacherTube for more.

An English teacher, Jim Hatten, at Tartan High School in Oakdale, Minnesota provides the third video. His class has been using the usual suspects of Web 2.0: blogs, wikis, podcasts, surveys, and webquests. Students comment on their work and the process. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect was watching Jim prowl his own classroom while the scholars work. It is a student centered class!!

Rachel Boyd, let her 6 & 7 year olds from Room 9 at Nelson Central School educate you about what they think a blog is and why they love using them! This fourth video is the introduction to her presentation for a New Zealand Online Conference.

From http://t4.jordandistrict.org, the final video is about paying attention, a term I have been made more conscious of after hearing Cindy Selfe utter them many years ago about our use of technology in education. We still need to pay attention for many of the reasons stated in this lovely video. It is a lovely compilation of Gardner, Bloom, Prensky, Gates, Carnegie Foundation, students, Daggett, Warlick, and others. I love the haunting music that suggests some urgency and the quote: "engage them, don't enrage them."

Now after viewing these remarkable videos, I hope you have a better understanding of what can be done with technology and where you can go and search for more inspirational examples and videos you can use in your classroom.

Eventually you will want to create your own. We will talk about that.