Video Chat

I just experienced Google's video chat for the first time. It was pretty easy. Once I had downloaded the software, all I did was ask my old friend Mitch to chat and the next thing I knew, we were looking at each other for the first time in months. The quality was great, Mitch could hear me just fine. I could see myself using this a Russian classroom. I would have my students chat with some of my friends from Ukraine and Russia.

Lesson #6 - Ripping a DVD/Downloading a YouTube Video

I downloaded the YouTube video Numa Numa. It is a video that I thought was hilarious in high school of a fat kid singing and dancing to an upbeat foreign song. Here's the link.

Downloading it was easy with the help of the Mozilla Firefox 1-Click YouTube Downloader add-on.

I have learned that I can legally rip DVDs for educational purposes, and that once I have that DVD ripped, I can keep a copy of it for myself and am not violating any copyright laws.

Copyright

In class today I really enjoyed learning about Creative Commons--"a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright (quoted from their website, see http://creativecommons.org/about/). I have always thought that if I were a musician or some other type of artist I would not want to keep those who enjoyed my works from sharing/downloading my material. I think it is cool to know that I could still have my material licensed to me thanks to Creative Commons, but that it could be a lot more accessible to the public.

Video Idea

I'm going to make a video that serves as an example of an assignment I would have my Russian students do. The idea is that I would arrange for them to have video pals--students in Russian speaking countries who agree to send video messages back and forth to my students. The first assignment (this video) would be a basic introduction. My students would:

1) Introduce themselves - tell who they are, where they are from, and what they like to do.

2) They would provide a picture of themselves and their family, telling who each person in the picture is and indicate their relationship to the student. This would all be done in a voice over of the picture.

3) The students would include a 10 - 20 second clip from their favorite song, giving the name of the song and the artist.

4) Finally, the students would ask their video pal one question.

Website

One of the assignments for this class is to create a website. I used Google Sites. Here is a link. Check it out!

My Personal Learning Network (PLN)

For those of you unfamiliar with what a PLN is, Wikipedia provides a good explanation of it. The way that I have decided to establish a personal learning network is by searching out educational blogs and websites and subscribing to them using Google Reader. I am a big Google fan--it's just so easy to use--and since I already use things like Gmail and Google Docs regularly, adding Google Reader to my repertoire of tools simply seemed logical. I also try to add links to useful blogs on my blog so that others can access my network.

I looked up other avenues for establishing PLNs like Delicious, but did not really want to sign up for yet another internet service. Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Playlist, Pandora, and other sites are enough for me.

95 Theses Rap

I took a history of the Reformation class this past Spring and my teacher showed us this video. I thought it was incredibly creative. At the same time I took a class all about assessment in the classroom. We talked particularly about authentic assessment and when we did, I thought of this video. I think that this would be a really fun assignment, and would show you, the teacher, that your students really got the material you covered. The guys who made this video were college students at Yale I believe. They used to have a website on which they discussed what was factual and what was not--most of the lyrics are factual--but I couldn't find it when I went to post this. Anyway, I think that something like this would be a really good project for students to tackle, even if it was just writing a rap or song or something.