Thing 19 Thing 20

Exploring podcasting and video casting (like the video casting better) was not as interesting as some of the other explorations. I did not subscribe to anything. When I checked my Bloglines for today, I found the greatest segment on the Concord school in Australia. They are a great example of a school where students and staff use several of the 2.0 tools we have explored. Photo sharing, blogging, social networking, and students are now creating and generating their own tools. By the way, it’s a school for students with disabilities. I attempted to embed it into this post but it kept crashing IE. Instead, I added it as a gadget. I think I like it better there anyway that way its always up and visible whenever you visit my blog. It is certainly worth checking out. Let me know what you think. As always, thanks for listening. Leslie

Thing 10

This video is too cute. I left a comment that it was "Amazing". I would have loved to see the work as it was being made and observe the lessons learned. I wonder if they journaled their work. Both the School Tube and Teacher Tube sites are far more "fruitful" - pardon the pun - and I hope schools can access them. I found them both to be worth spending time in, looking for PD for teachers, samples of lessons and classroom projects, samples of student work like the fruit bowl. This was a good use of my time. Thanks, as always, for listening. Leslie

Thing 9

So call me lazy - rather than think up an answer here is a great quote about YouTube from Alex Iskold: Great Blog - here's the URL: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_youtube_the_next_google.php

"Like any search engine, YouTube is not perfect. In general, short queries on generic topics, like Astrophysics, do not work very well. Somewhat surprisingly, George Washington and Chicken Noodle Soup do not yield good results either. But some searches do work very well. Ian said that his son frequently searches for episodes of Bakugan, which come up perfectly. Another likely search for a 9-year-old, Lance Wataru (a Pokemon character), works well, too. More specific searches, such as Donkey from Shrek, work even better. Anything that can be a video will be a video
I walked away with the impression that we are not quite there yet, but was intrigued. Clearly a lot of things lend themselves to video, not just movies and music clips, but educational videos, tourism and a lot of other things. If video content continues to grow, could video eventually replace text?
Most likely not. The main reason that text rules the web today is because of hyperlinks. Linking pages via text links is what makes the web possible. Hyperlinking videos would be a harder thing to do. Not impossible, of course, because you can link objects and insert text in videos, but it's just not as elegant as text. Besides the linking issue, not everything would be an effective video. For example, a research paper could be made into a video but would not be as easy to follow as the text."

All that said - YouTube has its uses but how do you know what you're getting. For a site "leaning towards entertainment" I'm not ready to say open the floodgates and let YouTube in the classroom. As always thanks for listening. Leslie