Hello Everyone,
In
reading the Richardson book I noted a number of URLs that I found of interest.
All these had to do with video content. I have found that with my students and
my subject area that using images and video in the classroom is a good fit. As
they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, especially if you are
functionally illiterate.
The
first site which I went to was www.Flickr.com.
This is a tremendous site with photographs and video of everything imaginable.
I searched topics which applied to my trade and there were good images which I
could use in class or put into a presentation. The problem was when I went to
copy or save an image it always said that I was unable to, do to copyright
protection. So, when Richardson says that Flickr is good for creating
presentations and slide shows or cobbling together virtual field trips, he must
have found some images on there that aren’t copyright protected (Richardson,
W., 2010, p. 103-104). I know that I couldn’t. I suppose if I were to use
images from this site in class I could filter through all the useless images to
get to the one which I wanted. Some of the photography is absolutely beautiful
and the range of what is on there is impressive. I searched the little town
where I live, Arva, and was surprised that there were hundreds of photographs
posted.
I
have always been a television enthusiast. I have a number of satellite systems.
I like to think that I watch good television. So when I read about www.ustream.tv.com,
a live streaming video site, I was enthused. There were many videos streaming live. I could
watch what was going on in a sushi restaurant in Tokyo; not much apparently. I
could watch some people swimming in their swimming pool. Most of the videos are
not live however. What I couldn’t do was find anything useful that pertained to
the subject areas that I must teach. When I searched for videos on Diesel
engines for example, there were videos of the Diesel night club, there were
videos about a band called Diesel, there were videos about the actor Vin Diesel
but the only video I found related to Diesel engines was one lame video made by
a husband and wife who said that they rebuilt the 8-71 Detroit Diesel in their
motor home by themselves. After watching the video I found that hard to
believe. There is a subscription required even though the textbook says that it
is a free site (Richardson, W., 2010, p. 126). You tube is by far better than
this; don’t waste your money.
I
also logged on to www.Jingproject.com.
Jing allows you to copy all or parts of what is on your computer screen so that
you could use it in a power point presentation for example. You can record video,
photographs, charts or whatever. There is also an annotation function so that
you can copy an image and add your own captions and comments. Jing is
supposedly free to download but after trying to download it several times I
could not find the sun icon on my screen anywhere. The Jing video said that I
would see this at the top centre of the screen. The textbook says it will
appear at the top right of the screen (Richardson, W., 2010, p. 125). I didn’t
see it anywhere. When I checked the programs on my computer Jing doesn’t appear
to be on there so I guess that it didn’t download. So, I never got the chance
to experience Jing but the video makes it look very useful.
I
found these sites to be relatively useless regardless of what the textbook
says. I will try to download Jing again but I have already tried three times
without success. Some of the photographs on Flickr could be of some use if I
could copy and save them and Ustream could be of value in the future if they had
better content. Why anyone would want to watch what goes on in a sushi
restaurant 24 hours a day I don’t know.
I added a few photos
from my work to my blog if anyone is interested.
References
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts,
and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd
ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Hello Gordon,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I really like your blog design.
I think that a site / application like Flickr would be very useful in an English Language Teaching context. Pictures have long been useful tools in class, and they have often been used to teach anything from vocabulary to tenses. A lot of today's learners are highly visual, and I have found myself needing to make a quick sketch on the whiteboard just to teach a simple word because an explication or synonym just did not get the meaning across.
Not only for basic language learning to teach vocabulary and basic tenses, Flickr can be used to spark a class debate, introduce concepts and themes for an essay assignment, or just to get students talking. For example, if I wanted to have students write an essay about global warming, I can display pictures about air pollution and so on to help the students brainstorm ideas.
Thanks,
Kemal
Hi Kemal,
DeleteI spoke too soon about flickr. I have discovered that I can save the images and I have been able to download Jing as well. I have been searching images on flickr for entertainment quite often.
Gord
Hi Gord, I totally understand your point. Believe it or not, you came to mind as I was reading about Flickr. While this may not work in my world, i thought it would be perfect for your instruction. I think you would build your own site with photos and video to use with your lesson plan for your class or use the RSS to aggregate relevant photos. I also explored several tinyurl's Richardson supplied and found them very interesting. I found the video publishing site started by Marco Torres at the San Fernando High School in California, tinyurl.com/6aalqr. The ones I viewed had powerful messages that made me stop and think. Take care, Elena
ReplyDelete