From Boobtube to Youtube

YouTube, the only place on the web to go if you want to get a video out to the world, or to discover what the world is watching. What did we do before YouTube? I guessed we had to sit in front of a clunky box and fiddle with rabbit ears just so we could tune in to catch the tail-end of SCTV and miss all the good Rick Moranis sketches. Those were the days... YouTube has really changed our world when you think about it - for the better! I can't tell you how many hours I've spent in front of my laptop and basked in the nostalgia of 1980's commercials (do you remember Mr. T cereal? because thanks to YouTube, I do).

For the classroom the possibilities are almost endless. Go to YouTube and type in the search bar "learn Abc", and page upon page comes up with all kinds of unique videos that help kids learn their Abc's. Maybe you're teaching high school and your class is a little advanced for Abc's, try typing in "Cuban Missile Crisis", and you can show your class President Kennedy's actual address to the nation, or an informative documentary on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Making a YouTube account is really easy too. I created my account a couple of years ago and now I have videos that I want quick access to 'favorited' so that they're easy to find. If I'm teaching my class how semi-permeable membranes work, I just dig it out of my favorites, if I want to enlighten my students with information on mysteries of the past, I go to my favorite videos and find that Crystal Pepsi commercial from 1992. I've even uploaded a couple of videos of myself playing some songs to share with my friends on the other side of the country. Youtube truly has endless possibilities. I can even find that Rick Moranis sketch I missed back in '83!

The Educational Faces of Wikispaces

Wikis are a cool place to share ideas, collaborate on projects and basically get peoples gears turning as a community. Wikipedia is probably the most well known wikispace in the world and it is a perfect example to show how knowledge on wikis grows exponentially through cooperation. Schools can start their own wikis and witness the same way that information accumulates and builds on itself through teamwork.

Maybe you have a class are growing pea plants to study dominant and recessive characteristics and you want to compare your findings. Create a wikispace and each group can post their findings and share them with other groups to compare their findings. The more students involved the better!

And just some food for thought on the most well known wikispace: did you know that if you search anything on wikipedia and click the first clickable word in the article that isn't italicized or in parentheses, that you will eventually end up at the entry for Philosophy? Crazy!

Flickr for the Classroom

Flickr is a great website that allows you to upload photos, artwork and other visuals and share them on the web. As a future teacher and as a person who loves visuals, I can see some cool uses for Flickr in the classroom. Flickr can be used to post pictures from a school field trip and students can swap pictures, tag their friends and share their experience with friends from other schools. There's also lots of pictures from all over the world on Flickr, so students can see what it's like for students going to school in China or Indonesia, or the U.K.

Back on the topic of school field trips, wouldn't it be cool if parents and students could preview where the kids will be going? With Flickr, you can check out pics from people who have been to the local museum, or aquarium, and get feedback from people who have been there. Sounds pretty great to me!

Receiving Stuff Swiftly: RSS feeds

RSS may stand for: Really Simple Syndication, but I have come to realize that RSS feeds are a great way
to receive stuff swiftly. I signed up for Google reader and right away started receiving stuff from my peers'
blogs and stuff from Google news... swiftly! RSS is an extremely efficient and convenient service that pumps content from my favorite sites directly to Google reader, which is great. I like to think of RSS feeds as the place where news meets spam: spews! Of course RSS isn't limited to news as you can have facebook updates, new podcasts, webisodes, wiki posts and more spammed directly to Google Reader!


Now, I consider myself to be a pretty patient dude, so when I have to go searching around the interwebs for updates from my favorite news sources or fresh posts from my favorite bloggers, it's no big deal. The convenience of Google reader and RSS is significant however and does make my life easier so I can only imagine what a god send it must be for impatient Ians who need tomorrows news yesterday!

... and so it begins.

Greetings and salutations! I have tried in vain to avoid being pulled into the "blogosphere", but if you are reading this entry then all must be lost. I am leery of technology at the best of times and have avoided the temptation to make my life easier by way of cellular phone, personal computer, or shaver with multiple blades for as long as I could. Like most temptations in life however it starts small, perhaps out of necessity and before you know it, it has grown into something beyond your control.

The world moves so fast though, that in order to keep up with it and remain relevant I found myself slowly capitulating to modern conveniences. My handy dandy type writer has been traded in for the super sleek laptop (and the trees rejoiced). My single bladed chin shredder shaver has been replaced with the six bladed, ultra-sonic, vibrating miracle shaver with built-in shaving cream dispenser and guide light for emergency black out shaves. Alas even my humble tin can telephone that I built at the age of seven has found itself rendered obsolete, first at the hands of a cell phone and now by way of this little blog that will track my progress from staunch anti-blogite to brave blogsmonaut. It should be a heck of a ride, I invite everyone to follow along!