Why YouTube?



In the comments to my last post I was asked why I chose to use YouTube instead of TeacherTube as a platform for my students to share their videos. I answered:

I chose YouTube for three reasons:

(1) That's where the kids go for video. They feel comfortable there and have their own accounts from which they publish video outside of school. This allows me to model some digital ethics vis a vis what do you and what don't you publish on YouTube.

(2) That's where all the people are. There is a significant math community on YouTube and I am hoping to draw their attention and perhaps participation which would add value to the assignment in terms of authenticity and audience.

(3) Kids think TeacherTube is for teachers, not them. That detracts somewhat from the value added by publishing publicly online.

A number of people have left comments for my students on their class blog. Thank you so much for that. In one of those comments pirategirl mentions how slow TeacherTube can be. I guess we can add that to my list of reasons above.

Copyright


As part of this assignment we talked about copyright and I emphasized that using copyrighted material (music) is considered stealing unless they have permission to use the content. Generally, I believe that using 30 seconds or less of copyrighted music falls under Canadian Fair Dealing guidelines. (If I'm wrong about this I welcome the correction.) As part of this discussion I pointed the students to Jamendo where they could find free music to use without worrying about any copyright infringements.

I'm really proud of the way they all dealt with copyright issues and how they credited all the sources they used. Click through to their YouTube videos (see below) to read the details they included not only in the videos but in the informational text that accompanies their work.

The day before the deadline for students to publish their videos one of them left this comment on their class blog:

Maybe JAMENDO should be my name =D

it helps a lot.. thanks..

STATUS: currently cutting down 1:30 to 0:30 s.... 0__o

I was particularly chuffed about that "status update." (See the short podcast below.)

The Videos & The Podcast


Here are the four videos that the student groups generated (the 30 second time limit did not include credits) followed by a brief podcast reflection we did on the last day of classes before the winter break. Give it a listen, this project isn't over yet ...

Ben and Zeph: Calculus Commercial

Kristina, Jamie, & Joyce: YE OLDE DERIVATIVE

Paul, Shelley, & Yinan: Team PSY Derivatives Commercial

Francis, Lawrence, & Justice: Calculus commercial complete

The Podcast Reflection

(Download mp3 file, 3.3 MB)

One of the things we learned was that 30 seconds is too short. The next round of videos will have a 60 second time limit. They'll all be published by the end of January. Stay tuned. ;-)

I don't have time for this. The pile of papers to mark is too big but I just read Clarence's post about Gary Stager and I can't help asking: "Gary. Are you reading edublogs or just talking about them? Have you seen any of this:"

Pre=Cal 40S (Winter 2005)


Pre-Cal 20S (Fall '05)


Pre-Cal 30S (Fall '05)


Applied Math 40S (Winter '06)


Pre-Cal 40S (Winter '06)


Calculus 45S (Winter '06)


AP Calculus AB ('05-'06)


Pre-Cal 30S (Fall '06)


Pre-Cal 40S (Fall '06)


Applied Math 40S (Winter '07)


Pre-Cal 40S (Winter '07)


AP Calculus AB ('06-'07)


AP Calculus AB ('07-'08)


Pre-Cal 40S (Fall '07)


Consumer Math 20S (Fall '07)

Dig in to each of those. Find the links to wikis, podcasts, buckets of links in del.icio.us, flickr, and don't forget to dig in to the outstanding work on display in The Scribe Post Hall Of Fame with contributions from more teachers than just I. Follow the links in blogrolls, get connected via twitter and find out of the daily innovations being made by teachers everywhere. I can't possibly list them all and, if you've looked, you can't possibly have missed them all. And don't overlook some of the excellent (and not so excellent) work done by students and published online as they work on Developing their Expert Voices. Their work is scattered far and wide across the net and aggregated here:

Developing Expert Voices (2007)


Developing Expert Voices (2008) (This site will continue to aggregate content through June 2008.)

Gary, what are you reading?

Well this just made my day ...

Linger is a student in my AP Calculus class. She does some of the most exceptional work when she is scribe. She recently published her Developing Expert Voices project. Lani left her this comment:

Hi Linger!

What a great introduction!

"The questions that I chose are of interest to me, and I chose them to challenge myself. My goal for this project is to learn something new and to be able to teach you, the reader as well. Yes, becase "together, we can learn.""

I really appreciate your wanting to move out of your comfort zone. And from your reflection, "Now I am twice amazed, because I got to make the problems on my own and I got to understand it in a different point of view.", it was definitely worth the effort!

Your problems were of interest and your explanations clear and valuable! I personally really liked the music to accompany my learning; just the right touch -- helping to move calculus out of "gross" as was your intent! :-)

You mentioned that you learned math and about yourself from this project. Do you find one more valuable than the other and why?

Kudos to you on your learning and teaching!

My very best wishes,


Lani

Here is her reply ...

Hi Lani, thank you for your comment!

I find learning about math and learning about myself equally valuable. I'm a very competitive person and I saw this project as a competition where I was against myself.. and that is the best kind. Because it's not like being in a team, where people have to pull their own weight to keep things balanced. This is the type where you're all in or you're not. It's the kind where you know how well you did, and you've got no one else to blame.

Mr. K told us the other day that he made us do all these things (blog, project, other assignments) so that we learn in many different ways. It doesn't matter what you're learning as long as you know how. He wants us to become life-long learners, and I think, on my behalf anyway, he succeeded. I really value this project, and our AP calc blog. Mr. K's job is to teach, and he did it well.

This project taught me a lot.. yes, math was the main point but learning about myself was a double bonus ;)

<smile>

This really is exemplary mathematics writing. The graphics are minimal. The effectiveness of the writing is what makes it Hall of Fame worthy.


The thing is, all my classes have decided that scribe posts need to be voted into the Hall of Fame. A minimum of 5 votes are required, 8 in the grade 11 class. And tonight, the grade 11 and the grade 12 pre-calculus classes have also outdone themselves. Take a look and see what I mean. ;-)