TechIntersect

Imagine being a student checking e-mail on the winter break and getting a message from a professor teaching the course you are enrolled in for the spring semester. Do you view it with dread? anticipation? excitement?

That’s exactly what happened to me last December when I started getting messages from Dr. Michael Wesch about what was going to happen on our first day of the new semester. In essence, we had already met online weeks before class even started, because he engaged us in a discussion of what we could do for our first video project.

I wondered how my own students would respond if I started discussing my course with them before the “official” start date. Would they be positive and excited? Perhaps… if I could come up with a project for them as cool as this one. Here is the video that resulted from those pre-semester discussions…

Our Digital Ethnography Class made this video on the first day of the semester.

I also learned from Dr. Wesch that Lynn Schofield Clark’s Innovation in Mass Communications class at the University of Denver made this “The Office” parody during the early days of their semester.

I like to hit the ground running on the first day of class whenever possible. So much so that in one of my classes this semester, I completely forgot about the syllabus and had to address it on the second day of class. I can definitely see some cool, first-day-of-class projects coming in the future!

I am currently searching for video examples of schools and students that can be found on the Internet. I hope to begin classifying and identifying the various kinds of video that can be found online related to education. I think there is a wealth of knowledge that can be gleaned from this source of information; I just hope that I am up to the task of making some sense of it all.

An ongoing issue of importance for me is getting schools, administrators and teachers to realize the benefit of using technology as learning tools. Videos like this one might be excellent for professional development, or at least might help to explain what is possible.

With programs such as the Virtual Scientist Guest Lecture series, the dream of what is possible in our schools with using the Internet becomes reality. A real scientist can converse with classroom students in real time using Skype.

These students use video to solidify their knowledge of music terminology:

In the short time that I have been doing this I have been learning a great deal about the schools of different cultures. Here are some examples:

Japan:

China:

Czech (?):

Kenya:

There is even a genre of classroom prank videos. In this video, Superman responds to a call in the middle of class.

I have already collected several hundred school and classroom videos. I know there are many more out there. This blog post is just a small sampling of what I have. If you would like to contribute to the video collection, I have started a new Diigo group for the purposes of bookmarking and tagging classroom recorded videos. Since the group is new, I still need to share my video bookmarks to it. The group URL is http://groups.diigo.com/group/classroom-you_tube . Just send me a request if you would like to participate and I can add you to the group.

It will probably take me a while to get my head around the possibilities that all of this information holds, but for now I am just going to try to focus on grouping and categorizing videos with similar characteristics.

My research this semester is focusing on the videos that students are making inside of their schools. For the past couple of weeks I have been scouring YouTube for videos recorded inside of schools. I have found examples from around the world, and the most revealing ones are the candid videos shot by the students themselves. Some patterns and themes are emerging, but for now, I will just give you some examples of what I have found.

This video shows a girl squeezing into her locker

Here is a video of students from Australia

A common form of classroom hidden camera video involves the student doing something outrageous to get a reaction from the teacher. This video exemplifies this particular format.

Here is another from the same genre, except it comes to us from Germany.

Fashion & makeup are often depicted in school videos. This one is interesting because the classroom is in Iran.

This video is the only one I’ve found so far that includes an adult telling the students to put the camera away.

Here is a video that answers a question every teenage boy wonders about. What goes on in the girl’s restroom? Now we know.

Another common question found in these videos is What is for lunch? Here is one from Japan.

This video is a student’s college application video.

Some videos document extraordinary teaching.

Or performing extraordinary feats.

This video is very clever parody of “The Office” called “The High School Office” includes many interior shots of a school in Wisconsin and glimpses of the students who attend there.

There are plenty of videos of superheroes and other celebrities crashing large lecture halls. Here Batman & Robin are chasing the Joker.

Lots of classroom videos are overtly sexual.

This one I found was pretty remarkable because the teacher in the background is oblivious to what is going on.

On a more serious note, there are videos of teachers dressing down or even assaulting students. This video comes from China (I think)

This video is an exception to what I’ve been looking for in that it isn’t filmed inside of school, but I still include it because of it’s importance. A mundane video to be sure, but looking at the comments it means a great deal to the people who are viewing it again and again. It is of a young man who has recently died. His family can continue to come here to Youtube to remember…

I am truly amazed at what I’m finding in online videos about teachers, students and schools from around the world.

Have you encountered really interesting videos filmed by students at school? Please send them my way. I’m collecting them.

Tags: research, YouTube

As I dig into the web I am starting to find more and more glimpses into classrooms around the world and I love it!

I first used the Internet in the early 1990’s and probably the most exciting thing about it to me was the ability to communicate on a global level. Although I was in the Navy and able to travel to foreign lands, those days are long gone and my travel is much less frequent these days.

I want my kids to be able to know about the world in which they live. I want them to have a broader understanding than simply of the community where they live. I have noticed that Americans are very ethnocentric; we think everyone in the world lives pretty much the same way we do. I certainly grew up thinking that way. We stand to learn a great deal from people who are different culturally and travel naturally affords the opportunity to learn about others. But travel, at least for the time being, isn’t going to be a regular option for us. However, virtual field trips are certainly possible.

I love how some brave teachers around the world are putting their students on the web, so my kids and I can have a look. I wonder how many teachers take the opportunity once in a while to take their class on a virtual field trip?

In many schools, the obstacles would be great. For example, YouTube is not permitted on most school networks. (With good reason, I might add. There is plenty on that site you wouldn’t want youngsters to see.) But a resourceful teacher could download at home some of the better videos of students from around the world to let kids see that even though we are different, we are all human and we have a sameness about us. Just type “pwn” in front of YouTube to download a video file you can use on a school computer.

Since I’m taking a Digital Ethnography class this semester, naturally I became intrigued when a blurb popped up this morning from The Catholic Laboratory podcast feed about a founder of Anthropology and Ethnography.

Died on this day in 1744 – Giambattista Vico, Italian philosopher of cultural history and law, who is recognized today as a forerunner of cultural anthropology, or ethnology

Hmm, I’ve never heard of him. So I hopped over to wikipedia to learn more but sadly there was no mention of Anthropology or Ethnography so I kept digging. Encyclopedia Britannica on my iPod was much more helpful. (Oddly enough, the mobile version gave me the full article, but the full version only gave me a teaser article with an invitation to register- sheesh!)

Evidently, Vico felt that human societies regularly pass through stages of growth and decay. Among these are a “bestial” condition, “the age of the gods”, “the age of heroes” and “the age of men”. After the “age of men” comes a second stage of barbarism in which

Families live huddled together in tentacled cities, veritable “deserts of souls.” These degenerate peoples do not hesitate to rush into the worst of slaveries to find shelter and protection. Money becomes the only value. Vico hoped to serve warning to men of the evils that could overtake them if they became worshippers of a materialist ideology or the servants of a science uninformed by conscience.

I wonder what he would think of us today?

Ok, just a little bit more to think about. I found these Vico quotes on Creative Quotations

“Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.”

“Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.”

“Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.”

There are plenty of videos on YouTube of people behaving badly. Here is an idea of kids using video to make a difference for good.

This is the “Trailer” episode of my research project this semester. I call it “Teachers on YouTube” and you would be surprised at just how many teachers there are in online video; many are are made without their knowledge. I feel that video projects make excellent pedagogy and am always interested in great teachers using video, but this first video I have made is more of a side-consideration for teachers to think about. The proliferation of cameras in society makes it simple to be recorded and broadcast to the world without your knowledge. What are all of the teachers out there going to do if (or when) one of your students records and publishes you without your consent?

My job was to film crowd reactions on the Flash Mob project we did on the first day of Digital Ethnography class. In this clip, we see the reaction of some onlookers as our “mob” lifts a car into a tight parking spot.

Be watching for the finished video in the coming days.

I’m in Michael Wesch’s Digital Ethnography course this semester. As I’ve written before on this blog, I expect to research how video is being used in schools. I think video is an excellent medium for teaching and learning. However, one aspect of this that was not readily apparent to me, but is still interesting- how students are posting in-school videos of themselves online.

Many schools do not do “official” online videos because of various privacy and security concerns. There are exceptions, especially in private school situations.

However, what are the implications of students who post their own videos. I know that in some states it is illegal for schools to post video or pictures of students online. Is it illegal if the students do it themselves?

The focus is usually on the protection of the students. What about the teacher’s privacy? Should a teacher have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the classroom? More and more, the news media shows footage of teachers who cross the line of decent behavior. But does a teacher have a right to expect that they won’t wind up on YouTube from a normal day that has been surreptitiously recorded?

What is the value, (if any) of looking at school videos posted to the internet? Does it tell us anything about schools and education? Or is it a very poor sampling that only shows moments that are of particular interest to the people who recorded them?

One aspect of these questions is that teachers need to be informed that this does indeed go on and they should respond accordingly. The question is, how should they respond? Many schools and classes ban cell phones. I can see how covert video-making might be a legitimate reason for banning the devices.

If you’re a great teacher doing great things, would you have a problem of your students always making videos of you? Would you give permission to make videos throughout your course?

I would think that the possibility of being recorded at any time might make teachers want to work even harder at always doing their very best, and at always treating students with dignity and respect. I could also see how some teachers would feel threatened by the new technologies.

The fact is, the technology is here. The question is what can be done about it, and what can we learn from it? What do you think?

I have been collecting for this class some “in school” video recordings, whether they are officially or secretly being made to see what I can learn about what is being put online about schools around the world. I would love to see any examples you may have that are noteworthy.

Well a new school semester has started, so that means things are getting busy for me. This spring I’m teaching three great classes- Networking 1, Web Page Development 2, and Digital Media 1. I’m also excited to finally be taking Digital Ethnography with Dr. Michael Wesch this semester. I first heard about him and his course back in 2007 and I’ve been waiting for three years for the stars to align and my schedule to allow me to take it. Dr. Wesch is really the one to thank for my being involved in the world of Web 2.0 and he is one of the big reasons of why I blog. I’m really looking forward to this semester and all it will bring.