YouTube

I have just discovered youtube and was amazed by its breadth of topic. It well and truly caterers for all audiences. (well audiences that have high speed internet!) (Which brings up another issues about access.)
I have just got broadband internet and have discovered how useful youttube can be.

Over the holidays i decided to learn to knit. I bought a knitting book, got home and got completely confused. So i hopped onto youtube and watched a couple of knitting videos and learnt to knit within a matter of 10 minutes. To me this is a perfect example of using social software to teach a skill. I can see many uses for this software within education.

However, after feeling really positive I discovered that my knitting wasn’t quite so perfect and I needed someone to trouble shoot with me. I had questions, like why is my knitting getting wider and wider?, Why are the holes in my knitting?, What happens when you know you have made a mistake, can you unpick it? How? To find solutions to these problems I decided to visit to my grandma where I could debrief and reflect with an expert in an interactive two way discussion.

This made me realize that although a video posted on a blog might be a starting point to teach something. To create a useful online educational point, where people could turn to develop a deep understanding of something (like knitting) and learn a skill well enough for it to be transferred, and create a place for reflection, you would need to develop a site that was interactive. The site would need to use a number of different mediums to interact with the teacher and students.

After this experience I have decided to create a web learning environment via a blog, that will use a mixture of tools to teach a skill. I will keep you posted. You never know, some of you might be learning to knit J

A Request

Is there anyone who does not have a partner for the assignment? I would be interested in joining up with anyone who also does not have a partner, or making a group of three with another group already formed.
Cheers, Emma