Video, Instruction and Problem-Solving

What are your three words? That's a question I want to ask my students. I can't wait to show them this video--when I first saw it, I immediately thought of my service learning students. How could three words change your world? or someone else's? What three words would share? I'd use the video clip as a hook, then we would write. Then I would show them how I might create my own "y3w" piece. Then I would invite them to create their own. Then I would teach them or show them the tools they could use to create their pieces: iMovie, Movie Maker, iPhoto, or PhotoStory. Oh the possibilities!

IWho knew there were so many instructional possibilities lurking out there on the web? recently graduated to DSL from dial up. I admit it. I was late zoomer. Not by choice, but by location. We live in the country. We lack infrastructure. We don't even get cable TV out where I live (and it's a good thing I think). DSL became available last spring and we signed up with BellSouth.

Now, my son and I get lost in the wonderland of YouTube regularly. "Funny Cats" is one of his favorites (he's six). I'm recently taken with "Your 3 Words" (above), and "I CAN from Team Hoyt." There are so many instructional possibilities, learning opportunites. I can only imagine.

I'm amazed at all we were missing simply because of the speed of our connection. I find myself trolling for good videos to use in my classroom quite often. Recently I searched for files about being an American. I want to use in with a unit called Get Over It! Character, Conflict, Cause & Effect! The core text is Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and I've collected a variety of other texts to use. This will be the first unit where I actually the capability in my classroom to include multi-media. Needless to say, I found several moving "Proud to Be An American" type videos I could use. I can't help but think about Marzano talking about how we need to make an emotional connection to content in order to aid memory. Janet Allen always says make it "meaningful and memorable"-- I can get a lot of M&M by pulling video clips into my curriculum.

I love that I can search google for video files (topic + video extension). I can't access YouTube at school, but I've learned how to use ZillaTube to download YouTube files and then convert them to a format that will play on my iPod or in Windows Media Player.

I've learned to download to my Mac too. Things are different on a Mac. Think different. Quite a marketing coupe; trite as it may be, I'm thinking differently. When I think about my process, I'm really beginning to notice that my problem-solving processes are the same whether I work on my Mac or PC. I search. I read. I wonder. I ask Google. the more specific I get my search strings, the better the returned results. I've noticed that I don't let the tech-problems or snafus bog me down so much anymore. We can find the answer to almost anything on Google... I'm discovering answers for myself. Talk about liberating.

For instance, after I downloaded the video downloader plug-in for Firefox and began to caputre videos using the Mac laptop, I was dismayed to discover (during a presentation no less), that Quicktime could not or would not play YouTube's "flv" videos. I had no idea. I had not paid heed to the file extensions. That afternoon I Googled: quicktime + "play flv" discovering Perian and a solution to my problem.

I learned that I could download a plug-in for Quicktime that would play YouTube "flv" files in quicktime (A future blog post will surely have to revel in the vocabulary I've aquired: plug-in, file extension, caputre, etc.). After reading about Perian, I downloaded it, installed it and was able to play the files I'd captured using the Firefox Video Downloader plug-in on my Mac.

This is the first time I've tried to embed a video into a blog post. We'll see if it works. If not, it will be one more problem for me to solve--one more failure to celebrate.

Hmmm... the embedded videos did not work, but I can see the links there! Hmm... I wonder what I need to do in order to get them to just appear and play?

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