Video sharing

I began this week thinking, "Oh great, I have to sign up for another thing on the internet", but then I remembered that I already have a YouTube account. I had to wade through the emails in my inbox to figure out my login and password, but eventually I made it onto the site, and was able to sign in unscathed. Seemingly I have been a member since 2011, and only have one random video to show for it.

Proof of my YouTube membership

After I recovered my YouTube account, I decided to read chapter 8 of "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts..". I skipped the portions on podcasts knowing that we will be covering those later in the course, and headed straight for screencasting. This is something I have never done before, and I think that the educational opportunities are endless. You can create tutorials at home and make them available for students outside of classroom hours, how genius! I decided to try out Jing, the screencasting tool mentioned in the book and created the simple video below.

 

Using Jing was so incredibly easy, and the site has tons of "how to" videos to watch if you get stuck. My only issue with this program was that if you want to download the videos onto your desktop they save as swf files and are then seemingly impossible to upload into your blog. After lots of reading, trouble shooting and general frustration, I uploaded my video to screencast.com (the company that runs Jing) and then copied the html from that video into my blog, so that I could directly imbed the video rather than just posting a link. Uggh. I am getting annoyed again just writing that. Anyway, it seems that mp4 downloads are available through Jing, but for a small fee (which I am unwilling to pay at this time).

Jing is a great resource and one that I will definitely use in the future. I have actually heard of teachers (specifically within the Sciences and Maths) using similar programs to record their lectures. Students then watch the lectures for homework and are then able use class time to do the problems/questions/activities that are usually assigned for homework. This allows students to digest the lectures and then ask their teachers questions while they are actually doing their assignments. It seems to really make sense, though it is in theory, completely abolishing the typical classroom format.

Now, onto YouTube. Below is the video I uploaded to my account. It was created during my BEd and I edited it using IMovie. The song in the background is called "Plucky Daisy" by Kevin McDonald and is one of many free silent movie downloads available on the internet.

My You Tube Video

YouTube has long been my best friend in the classroom. I love to show videos to generate discussion, to teach students skills (specifically within drama) and on the smallest of occasions, just for fun. Now, I realize that some of what I have shown is copyright material, but this happens all the time in the classroom. Technically we aren't allowed to show movies of any kind to an "audience" the size of a classroom without paying royalties, yet movies are still shown.

Something I did struggle with in China in regards to YouTube videos was the fact that YouTube was blocked. This eliminated a major teaching resource for us educators, because some student's English language levels were so low, that instructing with videos was the best way for them to learn. What I ended up doing was downloading my YouTube videos with a website called http://www.keepvid.com I was a life saver and I was only able to access it/YouTube in China by using a VPN to change my computer's "location". This website also eliminates having uncomfortably inappropriate video links pop up along the side of the YouTube site, and also gets around the terrible internet speed/streaming which often exists in schools. This also helps if your school blocks YouTube, though it requires a level of preparation that not all of us are good at.

Something I am still wanting to check out is TeacherTube, a website I had not heard of until this class. From my brief visit earlier today, it seems relatively straight forward and an excellent resource, though I don't know how many of my own videos I would upload to it.

image c/o tumblr.com

Thoughts for the classroom:

Video sharing can be used in any classroom, but I can see myself using it largely in drama. I could get students to make and edit videos. I could teach them basic editing skills by creating my own Ping videos. We could then upload those videos to YouTube, or to our classroom blog for student/parent enjoyment (though I would make them private and disable commenting, for student protection purposes).

My only concern would be copyright infringement when students are making their own videos, should they use songs/clips/pictures from protected sources. It would also be nice to use a video sharing site to display scenes performed in drama class, but again, plays are protected and I am not sure if that would technically be breaking any laws.

As mentioned above, I like to use YouTube videos to teach certain dramatic skills such as mime, which I am terrible at. There is actually an instructional series on YouTube from a professional mime which I have used numerous times and find extremely effective. One of her videos is below.

Photo Sharing

I wanted to start this blog off by saying how much I love photography, but these days, who doesn't? Everyone has a digital camera, or a phone that takes better photos than we could have ever dreamed was possible 10 years ago. It sometimes seems like people are more interested in documenting their lives via photos, than actually living (instagram anyone?). Actually, while on that tangent, here is a video that I think is HILARIOUS, (though it has no relation what so ever to what I will be talking about from here on out).

Really though, on a day-to-day basis I rarely take pictures. I'm a fair-weather photo taker who only uses her fancy camera when on vacation.  That being said, I did travel a lot during my two years in China, so I guess I took a lot of photos. When I was sharing them with people at home, I used to simply make a photo album on Facebook and then post a link to that album on my blog.  But, as I said in my autobiography, I started to get uncomfortable with Facebook technically owning all of my photos once I posted them to their site, so I stopped.

I've pondered joining an online photo sharing site for quite some time, but this class gave me the final kick in the pants I needed. My biggest problem this week was simply deciding which program to use. Thankfully after googling "what photo sharing website is best" I came across this page on Wikipedia. Yes I know *gasp*, using Wikipedia to get information when we spend so much time telling are students that it isn't a reliable source. Well, what can I say? It is a great place to gain information quickly and on this particular topic, had a handy dandy table breaking down exactly what each site entails.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photo_sharing_websites

I went back and forth between Flickr and Photobucket (they seem to be the most popular), but eventually Photobucket won. I did briefly contemplate using Picasa, as I use it for simple photo editing, but it only offers 1GB of free storage. It would have been the easiest for me to use, given that many of my photos are already stored in that program on my desktop, but I wanted a bit of a challenge. The table on Wikipedia claims that Photobucket offers free unlimited storage and can be used to post videos, so it seemed like killing two birds with one stone. It also had fewer restrictions than the other two.

Signing up for Photobucket was simple, and I like the fact that you can make your albums public, private or visible with a password. I also like that your photos can be downloadable by others, if you so choose, as I often send my parents images by email which is extremely time consuming. This way I can simply upload photos to Photobucket and direct friends/family to the site and then they can take the photos they so choose.

Having used both Iphoto and Picasa relatively extensively, Photobucket seemed quite easy for me to manage and extremely intuitive. I liked the fact that each album can have its own privacy settings and that you have the ability to add captions to photos you choose.

I decided to upload an album of photos from my recent trip to Las Vegas with my family. I mainly chose these photos because they are the newest images I have taken, and I also wanted to send the link to my parents to see if they are able/ can figure out how to download the pictures from the site. Here's hoping it is as user friendly as I think it is.

Here is the link to my Vegas photo album for you all to peruse
http://s1322.beta.photobucket.com/user/normanthenomad/library/Las%20Vegas%202012

I look forward to playing around more with Photobucket and can't wait to try the photo editing tools.

*** one thing I did notice was that Photobucket worked infinitely better with Firefox than it did with Safari***

School use:

I am not sure when I would use this tool in my classroom as I'd rather just add images directly to my blog than onto Photobucket. I don't use images enough in my classroom to merit an entire album.

I could see this being a very useful tool for a photography class, not only because it provides a forum for portfolio display, but Photobucket also runs photo competitions relatively frequently which students could enter.

I could also see this tool being useful for group projects with a visual component, so that students could share the photos they had found with fellow group members.

Perhaps this would also be a good place to store historical images for a history class, though I am not sure what the rules are about positing photos which are not your own on the site.

It could also be used as a place to display pictures of projects/work for parents to view, should they be interested in knowing what their child has been up to in class. These images could be password protected and parents could be provided with the password so that student work couldn't be viewed by just anyone on the internet.