Adventures in Teaching and Learning

This post will hopefully cover straightforward video sites as well as more interactive audiovisual sites. Once again, I have asked my PLN (Personal Learning Network) of other “educationalists” and “edtech” folk at Twitter to share their favourite sites, which I will hopefully share with you here. I’ll start with a few of my own:

YouTube – Probably one of the most well known Web 2.0 sites. There is a lot of inappropriate content, as there is anywhere, but don’t be put off – there is a vast amount of fantastic content as well. If you are an RE teacher, then from my skattp profile, you can find links to a group for RE teachers and to some other accounts that I find helpful. I am sure there are similar groups for other subjects.

TrueTube – There some excellent (British based) videos on here that would make great debate starters. TrueTube hopes that young people will make more equally provoking videos and share them on the site. I have written about TrueTube before, here.

Teachers’ TV – An excellent resource for CPD; the site also contains videos that can be used in class. There are also groups and forums that you can take part in.

TeacherTube – Videos by and for teachers.

Animoto – Upload photos, choose from a selection of Creative Commons music, and Animoto will produce an audiovisual presentation for you.

Xtranormal – If you can type, you can make movies. An easy way for a teacher to make a starter video, or for a student to produce an ICT-based piece of homework.

VoiceThread – You could add this as a way to introduce a topic, by uploading a picture or video, then recording a commentary while using pens to highlight key points. Or, you could upload students’ work, and other students can then comment on each others’ work, as a form of peer assessment.

GoAnimate – A fairly easy way to produce short animations. These can then be hosted on a video site, such as YouTube or TeacherTube.

Voki – This is an easy way for you, or a student, to animate a message without having to record your face as well as your voice. You normally need a blog to host it on.

Audacity – An excellent tool that can be downloaded for free. Easy to use to record and to transform voices as well. The voice can then be added to vokis or other videos.

There are some good primary examples on this Demo Primary School site, based in Falkirk. Thanks to @mvass for producing it, and to @johnmclear for drawing it to my attention!

I will add more later, as I receive more suggestions!

I’ve been exploring Twitter, looking for new people to follow that I might be able to learn from or be inspired by. I came across an RE teacher’s blog, and have decided to follow some other links and share them with you (and with me, for the future). Unfortunately some of the bloggers have not blogged recently; however, perhaps getting a mention here might encourage them to have another go! And we can always learn and be inspired by any posts already posted. So here goes …

Intellectual Bohemian – another Catholic RE teacher based in London.

Catholic Teachers Online – I’ve just added myself to this. Hope other Catholic RE teachers add themselves here. In fact, the site is for all Catholic teachers.

Simon O’Carroll – The first teacher I found on Twitter.

I feel I ought to add a short reflection on this. Some people might wonder why Catholic teachers, whether RE or not, might want to particularly identify themselves as such. I mean, I don’t think I often go on about being a Catholic RE teacher on my blog, although I am sure it comes up from time to time, and is probably obvious on my school blogs. I have taught in both a state school and a Catholic school. The thing is, as an RE teacher, the content is – for me, anyway! – quite different in a Catholic school from a non-Catholic school; I also find that my delivery is a bit different too. So it would be interesting to be able to share ideas with other teachers in a similar context!

It’s Activities Week. (Not sure about the use or not of an apostrophe there … I’ve been wondering about it all week. Feel free to let me know!) My “activity” is using ICT in the classroom, in particular using Voki and Animoto. We also wanted to use CrazyTalk.

I’m sure you know what’s coming next. Despite arranging before the weekend for these sites to be unblocked, and despite the best efforts of our ICT network manager to unblock them today, for the best part of the day no one could access either of these sites. Of course, the pupils are all able to access games which involve shooting or racing. We eventually managed to get a couple of pupils onto voki, and a handful onto animoto, but even then, in all but one case, animoto seemed to crash before they had their final video. At least the one pupil who managed to produce a video seemed pleased with the result!

Right. I’m off to upload the photos a couple of pupils took round the school and see if I can make a nice animoto from home instead, to wow them all with tomorrow!

An advert for teaching in Saipan; I laughed listening to the song, and decided to share it with you!

Also, I saw the “Extremes” TDA advert tonight on TV. A teacher uses a mobile as a link to a lesson on human rights, then uses images (gleaned from Google or Flickr, perhaps) to engage the students in discussion – what’s going on? How might they feel? etc. A good example of using Web 2.0 to support learning …