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.
