Saturday, February 2, 2008

Blog 2 Video-Sharing Sites

In researching for this blog entry, I have come to realize the additional educational benefits of creating videos with students and receiving comments on those videos from a global audience. The article on Film School from Edutopia illustrates many educational reasons for creating videos in the school environment.

I can also see using video-sharing sites to encourage students to evaluate videos. Using a variety of videos selected from various sites, students could not only learn to assess validity of content but could also evaluate videos for their artistic merit. In doing this, students could be encouraged to establish a list of criteria to be used in evaluating their own videos.

Marlene Asselin (2005) in her study entitled "Teaching Information Skills in the Information Age: An Examination of Trends in the Middle Grades" found grade 6 and 7 teachers' and teacher-librarians' perspectives suggest a serious need for information literacy instruction to go beyond the basic level of accessing, locating and selecting information, to critically evaluating resources (especially digital and internet resources). With the definition of information literacy expanding to include multiple forms of literacy beyond the printed text, it is important we teach critical literacies when working with students as they use video to access or share information.

I wanted to learn how to post a video on YouTube and was surprised to find it wasn’t difficult at all. I simply signed up, confirmed my email address and selected Upload. From there I was able to select a video from My Pictures on my computer and upload it, giving it a title and comments. My video (chosen from what was readily available) was uploaded with the subject’s permission, of course! What I learned from this trial is how easy it would be to videotape students, or have them create videotapes and upload them (with the required permission) to share with parents, peers or anyone interested in the topic. I know my students would look forward to and benefit from the interaction they could have with their audience. Simple and amazing!

1 comment:

Val Martineau said...

Hi Elizabeth: I like the uses discussed in Film School. Benefits to all areas but in particular the visual arts is amazing. I can see creative kids just taking off in this forum.
I like your idea of having students evaluate several videos (pre-chosen). This is a good exercise in critical thinking, as the kids look for content, quality, is it accurate, storyline etc. I see myself dusting off my broadcasting skills and working with the students on creating dynamic 'interview videos or news casts'.
I applaud you in finding it easy to upload your own video. I tried numerous times to no avail. I found the instructions easy to follow but the result not so great. I noticed your clip was 4 sec and Arlene's polar bear clip was about 8 sec. Perhaps mine was too long. I did download the option for more than 100MB's however. Still a great learning curve for me.
Great blog.
Cheers
Val