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
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Welcome
Welcome to my Blog site for the subject Flexiable Learning Environments.
About Me
- Emma
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- I am the Prep coordinator and Prep teacher at PHPS. I have been teaching for five years 4 of which have been at PHPS.
4 comments:
I like YouTube myself but as yet have not taken on knitting. If you need to join a group, Melissa and I would be happy to have you join us. We are looking at some project on Podcasting... yet to work out the details.
Bill D
http://bill-d3.livejournal.com
I think you've mentioned a really great point. You Tube allows social interactivity, but there has to be some two way communication. So whether that is responding back via video or maybe responding via some other social online medium, such as a blog.
Agree with the other comments ... and I love the analogy you have made with the knitting. It goes towards putting the minds of some teachers at ease - I have come across those who pointedly refuse to have anything to do with any technology in teaching through fear of becoming redundant...
Good time to start knitting - you will hopefully become an expert by the end of winter (or the start of a family ;-q)!
You Tube is great for sharing videos. Unfortunately it is not available at most schools due to the ability of exploitation such as the current issue of 'fight clubs at scotch. Perhaps there is a need for a you tube education section or other video hosting for students and teachers. It sure is hilarious some of the things that people post and some of the things that become popular for seemingly no reason.
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