A couple of nights ago, I was watching Youtube videos with my 3yr old when she noticed a thumbnail of a video featuring my dad. She instantly yelled, “Pappou, Pappou, I want to see Pappou.” We began to watch the video and within seconds, she began to call directly to her grandfather. It began slowly with “Pappou. Pappou.” But quickly, she became noticeably agitated that dad seemed to be speaking over her and not responding to her voice. She became frantic and began to yell, “Pappou! Pappou! Listen to me Pappou!” Then, she began to cry. For the next 45 minutes, she cried hysterically for her grandfather.
At some point during this, I realized that she had never before simply “watched” a video of her grandfather. Before this, every time that she had seen my dad on screen, it has been through a two-way, interactive medium such as FaceTime or Skype. For kids growing up today, the boundaries between physical and virtual may not be as well-defined.
As I consoled her through this very long moment, the professor in me contemplated how incredibly different it will be for my children to grow up in today’s technology-saturated world, and more in particular, I wondered what this mediated reality will mean for their current and  future human relationships. As parents, educators, administrators, and theorists, we really need to pay attention.
I am working on a keynote presentation for the CEGSA conference coming up July 17, and I am hoping to gather insight from individuals for a crowdsourced portion of the presentation. It is my goal to gather original text/quotes, images, videos, audio, slides, etc. from you, members of my learning network, to answer the question, “What does it meant to be literate today?” Â I expect that most responses will come from an information/knowledge/connected society perspective, and that’s great, but I am also happy to receive alternate perspectives on this topic.
I hope to use some of these in the presentation, but expect that I won’t be able to use all of them. However, I will be sure to share all submissions openly for others to see.
I have created a Google Form to streamline the process (click here), but if you would rather just email me your submission (or need help getting it to me), contact me at couros@gmail.com.
Thank you to all of of those willing to help. I truly appreciate your insight and support.
My dad died suddenly on March 26, 2013. I have about a dozen, half-written blog posts on my computer that I just can’t bring myself to publish. Some of these posts describe the life of my dad, and others are my conversations with him after his death. None of these posts feel right. None of these posts are good enough to describe his life, his accomplishments, his lasting influence on me, or how horribly I miss him. He was my father and my very best friend. And his loss is so incredibly painful.
But I have to move on. By writing a few incomplete thoughts here I am hoping that I can move forward in some little way. I know that dad would want that.
The night before he died, dad talked with my entire family. He spoke to my three kids telling them each how much he loved and missed them. Then, he and I had our last conversation. Dad told me how much he loved me, and how I have made him proud. He was unusually sad, and he said it over and over again. I feel now that he, in some way, knew his time had come.
Since he passed away, I’ve wondered what I could have said differently to him during our last call. I told him that I loved him, that I missed him very much, and that I would see him very soon. I am so happy that these were my last words to him, although I’ve been struggling with the last part of that sentence for the past 96 days. Soon wasn’t soon enough.
But over the past few weeks, I have seen my dad in ways that I didn’t see before. I see my dad in my oldest girl’s mannerisms, in my boy’s physical appearance, and in my youngest girl’s expressions. I feel my dad within me in the way that I hold my hands against my face sometimes, in the way that I hug my children, and in the way that I love and care for my mother. He is ever present. He is all around me.
So I have to get better at not missing the things that I can’t have – his laugh, his advice, his concern, his voice – and I need to focus on the things about my dad that I still carry with me. There is so much to be grateful for and I need to appreciate and honour all that I have gained through my extraordinary relationship with my beloved father.
I miss you dad. I love you more than anything, and I am thankful for everything that you have given me. You’ve made me the man that I am today. And I will not disappoint you.
I’ve been busy with #etmooc, a MOOC focused on educational technology & media. We’re nearing the (official) end of our first topic, Connected Learning, and late last night, we published a crowdsourced, #etmooc lipdub project. I feel that the video accurately captures the energy and personalities of #etmooc participants, and the spirit of sharing and connecting that has dominated this experience. Take a look.
Several people wanted to me to share the process of creating this lipdub, so I am detailing the steps in this post. The inspiration for this video came from the project Dean Shareski crowdsourced and edited for my 40th birthday. He’s previously shared his process which is similar to what we ended up doing.
So here are the steps:
After getting some support for the idea of a lipdub project, I created a Google Form which collected nominations for the song we would eventually choose. I also gathered nominations directly in our #etmooc Google+ Community and via Twitter.
I took the top 10 most nominated songs and added them to a PollEverywhere poll. It was a close race, and you can see the final results here.
I created an editable Google Doc (see it here) that included a background to the project, song lyrics (found easily via Google), and instructions for submitting video. As you can see in the document, people volunteered for a specific line in the song and were asked to create and upload a video.
Video was uploaded to my Dropbox account by using a connecting service called DropItToMe. This latter service allowed participants to upload video to a specific folder in my Dropbox account without me having to explicitly share that folder with every single person. As well, people couldn’t see, edit, or delete the videos of others, Â so this made this project potentially more manageable. DropItToMe worked really well, and also has great application for other classroom projects.
For people using mobile devices, DropItToMe wouldn’t have been as convenient. Instead, I specified an email account where files could be sent. If you notice, the email address was couros+etmooc@gmail.com. This is actually an alias address based on my real, couros@gmail.com account. If you have a Gmail email address you can add +’anything’ to the username to create an email alias – this makes it easy to create specific filters for special projects, to sort email as it comes in.
It is important to note that I specified a naming convention for files. I had people include name, geographic location, and song line #. This made these videos fairly easy to manage and reference.
Once the videos had all been uploaded, I shared my Dropbox folder with @stumpteacher who agreed to do the actual video editing – that was the hard work!
After a few drafts, the final copy was uploaded to Youtube. Like magic! Kinda.
There were a few minor things that would have made things easier.
The naming convention that I chose had the line # at the end, instead of at the beginning. Had I asked for the line # at the beginning, it would have made it easier to sort these videos in numerical order in Dropbox.
I Â should have asked for slightly longer clips so that there would have been the possibility of more overlap. A few clips ended up being quite short.
Perhaps, I should have asked for a standard aspect ratio from participants – we had a mix of 4:3 and 16:9 – as well as a minimum resolution (480p or better?). Yet, in some ways, I feel that the mix may have actually added to the overall feel of this video.
That may be it. Thanks to everyone for being part of this project, and special thanks to Josh for his tireless editing and attention to detail. It’s truly a project that makes my heart warm – that helps to represent the human connection in these learning networks – the joy, the fun, the passion, the creativity. And, as @cogdog tweeted:
They don’t do networke generated lib-dubs in Coursera or U-Da-City #etmooc
I’ve felt sick since I heard the news. I have so much to say but I can’t get it out. And if I wrote what I’m really thinking, it’d likely come out like the Onion’s coverage of the massacre.
My boy is in Kindergarten, and it’s hard to look at him without thinking of the 20 children that were taken today. I can’t look at Twitter without thinking of Principal Dawn Hochsprung who, by her tweets, demonstrated such love and compassion for her job, her community, and the children under her care. And, I can’t stand the politicizing – debates over the 2nd Amendment, the NRA, treatment for mental health issues – on these days that we should simply be mourning for those lost, celebrating their lives and their heroism, and giving this community the space and support needed. The politics can wait and these issues will be divisive long after we’ve laid the victims to rest.
For the record, no one in Newtown was talking about gun control laws, mental health issues, or anything. We were just holding each other, trying to make sense of the senseless. We are ok with you grieving with us, but put down the camera and help us try to piece back together our lives. We need that more than media coverage of this sad day in our history.
And if our mainstream press really wants to make sure that this tragedy is not repeated, take some advice from this Charlie Brooker segment (especially after the 1:30 mark) on how *not* to report on mass murder.
To the victims and families devastated by this tragedy, I mourn for you. My heart is broken, and I can’t imagine your pain.
I came across this Super Mario Brothers video on Youtube today. It’s a wonderfully produced, short animation written from the Goomba perspective. As I watched it, the former social studies teacher in me thought that this would be a great video to introduce topics like historical perspective, bias, and propaganda within the social studies, history, or even English curricula.
Sharing this tidbit is nothing huge, and I could have probably just let it go as this tweet. However, as I’ve become increasingly concerned about the ownership, longevity shareability, and development of my own thinking, I’m trying to be more conscious about where I’m sharing ideas. In other words, I’m hoping to get back into the habit of sharing more in this space – my space. We’ll see.
Edit: I thought afterwards that this video also relates to the concept of empathy. If you are interested in a fantastic video on the importance of empathy, check out “The Power of Outrospection” (especially this video) from Roman Krznaric.
I just returned from the grocery shopping with my five-year-old son. As we approached the fruit section, my curious little guy asked, “Do bananas grow with tips up or with tips down?” Since we don’t have a lot of banana plants in Regina, I didn’t actually know off-hand. But, being the connected father I am, I pulled out my iPhone, Googled it, and in less than 30 seconds, we were looking at photos of banana plants and we no longer had to wonder.
We no longer had to wonder.
I did that entirely wrong. At the very least, I could have asked my boy, “Well, which do you think son?” perhaps followed by “So, why do you think that?” But I didn’t. And because I didn’t, I messed up a great learning opportunity.
Instead of providing my boy with an extended opportunity to be curious, to imagine deeply and to think creatively, I reinforced one of the worst habits of our generation. I demonstrated to my boy that you can solve a problem without thinking. And, I won’t do that again.
My brother George recently wrote the post “Denying Our World” where he recalls a compelling narrative that causes him to reflect upon what it means to live ‘online’ and our associated imperative as educators to teach to this reality. In the comments of this post, ‘Kirsten T.” pushes back with a thoughtful response, and in part states:
I find the argument “It’s not going away” to be neither substantive, nor compelling. It echos to me the feet stamping of educators who say “I’ve always done it this way”.
I’ve used a form of the “it’s not going away” argument in past conversations and presentations, but its meaning for me seems very different than what is described by Kirsten. Since there seems to be discrepancies of understanding, I feel that the statement is worth exploring and further articulating. So what do I mean when I say “it’s not going away”?
First of all, what is the “it” that I am referring to? “It” is a transformed reality where access to new tools, abundant content, and vast networks simultaneously provide countless new affordances and associated challenges. “It” describes:
a world where governments, corporations and educational institutions try to control all of these forces but most often, realize that their attempts are futile.
I could go on …
And what do I mean by “… is not going away”?
Change is constant, so obviously, our current conditions will not remain exactly the same. Rather, there are likely three possible futures related to these new affordances (this is a simplified argument but for real substance, check out Downes’ “Ten Futures“)
Things regress, people get bored with media, and we go back to some pre-telephony version of society. I think this reality may include roller-rinks, dance-halls, and lots and lots of bowling. Actually, bowling may be a bit too high-tech especially if there are those digital scoreboards. In any case, I’m pretty sure this reality isn’t going to happen so there is not much need for further speculation.
Things move ahead; new tools are created, more content becomes available, and networks continue to be used to form and sustain important aspects of our relationships (including those of teaching and learning). And the implications of these technologies will continue to shape our world. Think, for instance, of what the impact of this “breakthrough” in spoken-word translation could have on our lives. We will soon have the ability to have accurate, automated live translation of our words into just about any language spoken. What does that mean for second-language learning? What does that mean for opening up our world to different forms of cultural knowledge? What does that mean for creating a more global, and peaceful society? And that is just *one* new technology.
We live in complex, media-rich, connected environments. As adults, we have built these spaces for our kids and set them up in situations where I’ve heard members of our generation exclaim, “I’m sure glad Youtube or Facebook didn’t exist when I was a kid!” But these do exist. And no one – no one – really understands the full implications of what these devices and spaces have on the future of our children. So what are our *obligations* in all of this as administrators, parents, and educators? Do we selfishly ignore “it” because it feels uncomfortable and complex? Or do we roll-up our sleeves, embrace this discomfort, and live up to our ethical responsibilities for our kids?
We don’t need to have all of the answers. But we need to model what it means to try.
I’ve been discussing memes such as Gangnam Style in my recent presentations. I’m particularly interested in memes as an emerging information literacy and their study is important for comprehending the way in which information flows through systems. Dae Ryun Chang wrote that one of reasons why Gangnam Style has taken off is that “the song intentionally lacked a copyright so that people would be encouraged to create their own online parodies, in essence their own ‘XYZ Style'”. It’s not quite factual (as argued elsewhere) that the song ‘lacked’ a copyright, but it is certainly clear that Psy has encouraged the remix and reuse of the song which has led to some incredible statistics (such as being the first video to reach 1 billion views). And, besides the ability to reuse/remix, the song is just downright catchy.
There have been hundreds of great remixes. Bill Nye Science Style, Minecraft Style, Baby Gangnam, and the Gangnam Halloween Lightshow rank among my favorites. But when I see schools participate, THAT’S where I think this gets so very relevant and exciting. Students and teachers at Okanagan Missionary Secondary (Kelowna, BC) recently put together this lip-sync version of the song. The video has achieved around 33,000 hits, and created a great buzz at the school.
The video was shot over a two week period at various locations around the school. Once all the post production work was completed, the school held a ‘spirit assembly’ last Thursday and the reception was astounding. Not only was the crowd entertained, laughing and cheering to the on screen antics, but for the rest of the day students could be heard excitedly talking about it or mimicking dance moves.
Creating such joyful events at school are vitally important for an overall healthy learning environment. Combine this with complex, project-based work that seamlessly integrates new literacies through media development and your institution has just made great strides toward the development and modelling of a positive digital footprint (for the institution and for the individuals involved). And these sorts of activities can go a long way to ease some of unwarranted fears regarding social media felt amongst parents, teachers, administrators and students.
And the Grade 11 French immersion students at Holy Trinity Catholic High School (from the Ottawa Catholic School Board) have taken the Gangnam craze even further by creating a French version of the song. Even if you are not a French speaker, you will quickly notice the creative effort that has gone into this parody. That, and the students look like they are having so much fun!
These last two examples demonstrate the successful intersection of emerging media and school learning. It can also be seen as an example of what Thomas and Brown describe as “The New Culture of Learning“.
The new culture of learning actually comprises two elements. The first is a massive information network that provides almost unlimited access and resources to learn about anything. The second is a bounded and structured environment that allows for unlimited agency to build and experiment with things within those boundaries.
So how is your educational institution embracing this new culture of learning? Or, how are you as a teacher, administrator, or learner creating opportunities to critically discuss and/or participate in these new media environments? I’d love to hear from you.
If you’ve been following this space, you’ll know that we’ve been considering and planning an educational technology focused MOOC to begin January of 2013. I’ve written on the development of this idea here and here, and there are a number of us who have been working on this collaborative #etmooc planning document and discussing possibilities in this Google Group. Progress has been intentionally slow, and very thoughtful.
Yesterday, I had a chance to meet with a few interested collaborators in a Google Hangout and the resulting conversation has me thinking about this project in a very different way than what was originally conceived. I think that this is a positive step, and I am sharing my thoughts here in hope that others will provide feedback on this reconceptualization.
Google Hangout planning meeting with Alan Levine, Helen Keegan, Lenandlar Singh & Valeria Lopes. Sean Williams attended, but not shown.
The Problem:
Each time I facilitated EC&I 831, a MOOC-like course, I was fortunate to have a core of 20+ registered students that took the course for credit. The approximately 200 other students, many who acted as mentors, had very loose responsibilities around the course, and came and went according to their commitments and interests. #etmooc, as planned thus far, would not have that core group. So, much of the discussion thus far around #etmooc has been around developing learner motivation, engagement & retention especially in light of the high drop-out rate for MOOC participants.
While I viewed the lack of a core group as a welcome challenge, until this latest Google Hangout, I hadn’t really considered the freedoms that a core-less MOOC also provides. For instance, the most discussed elements around #etmooc planning so far have been related to decisions around the specific content areas to be covered (see table), especially since our potential audience is somewhat uncertain. It took me some time to realize that I was planning this too much like a traditional course, focusing on a pre-constructed curriculum, scope & sequence. This is an unnecessary constraint.
I feel that it is the ‘Course’ element of the MOOC acronym that constrains our thinking (the ‘Massive’ is a close second), so this is exactly the component that I hope to avoid in moving this #etmooc project toward the vision of an #unmooc.
So what could our #unmooc look like? Here are some ideas that originated from our planning meeting.
Focus: The original content area for #etmooc was educational technology. This is such a broad area, too vast to cover in any one course, and certainly my bias has been towards social software, free and open content and connected learning. For the purposes of this #unmooc, I now propose that the general focus should be around supporting the creation of practical knowledge and experiences for developing connected learners. (It’s roughly worded – please help me idea/word-craft this)
Audience:
The #unmooc could be appealing to educators of all sectors, preservice teachers, students, parents, or really anyone wishing to be supported in developing connected literacies & skills for themselves, or for others.
Content/Curriculum: Rather than developing a long, defined list of topics, it would be ideal to have curriculum driven by participants – curriculum that is responsive to not only learner interests, but to current trends & events (while scaffolding within a historical context). Weekly ‘topics’ could be broadly themed with variations across interest groups, sectors, subject areas, and geography. I would suggest thorough, ongoing & recurring orientation to connected learning concepts (including tool orientation & #unmooc sharing protocols) so that participants develop basic literacies & skills necessary to share, discuss, and create.
There could also be a strong focus on creating learning artefacts (this was voiced loudly in our meeting). An Education adaption of the #ds106 assignments database could prove worthwhile. As well, as I did with my #eci831 course, it could be ideal to have any educators who participate in #unmooc to develop projects that could directly be applied to their own contexts. Thus, #unmooc could become an ideal testing ground (e.g., virtual lab) for teachers (or preservice teachers) to develop or facilitate presentations/projects with other educators before implementing elsewhere (e.g., in classrooms or with colleagues).
Timeline:
#etmooc was originally planned to begin in January, and end in April. But there are several of us beginning to question the need for an end date. I know from my own experience with #eci831, that many students became so immersed in the network, that it felt odd & unnatural (and sad for some) to have to ‘end’ the experience. For several students, the residual experience of the course has remained. If successful, the #unmooc could go well beyond April – and if not, we could pack up early. But since we are not bound by academic schedules, there seems little point in predetermining an end-date.
In our meeting, Helen Keegan raised a good point regarding her approach with her students. In her courses, students spend a portion of time sharing their artefacts and celebrating their successes in public spaces. In support of this, Alan Levine added that there should be a set of explicit milestones for participants. In my own experience, my students’ ‘summaries of learning’ have been wildly popular in the courses that I teach. So, even without an end date, it is likely important to establish milestones throughout an #unmooc experience to celebrate successes, share creations, and renew connections.
Interactions:
The type and format of participant interactions in the #unmooc could vary greatly. I believe there is still great value in large synchronous web-conference sessions/presentations, especially for introducing/advancing ideas and for tool demonstrations. However, deeper interactions are certain to occur through one-to-one or small group communications, both synchronously and asynchronously. Spaces could be provided via the #unmooc but as I’ve often stated, I believe that as much as we can use and control our own learning spaces (e.g., self-hosted WordPress blog), the better off we are in the future. Of course, with this distributed approach, proper illustration of the importance and utility of tagging is essential to aggregating networked conversations.
While interactions in the #unmooc would likely be more often serendipitous in nature, designing interactions would be key to the function of the #unmooc. Forums could be provided and/or we could setup a virtual helpdesk through a Twitter hashtag, or more directly, through a tool like Google Hangouts. As well, the nurturing of subject-area, sector-based or geographically-bound sub-groups would be beneficial to deeper interactions.
One of the most important comments from this recent meeting was from Alan Levine when he suggested that the #unmooc should help to encourage people to “do things out in the world”. While I have suggested above that activities in the #unmooc could directly inform what educators do in their classrooms, I think that this notion is extended by Alan’s comments. If we can nurture this idea, to enable participants to do (good) things out in the world, whether simple things or those of deep social value, I believe that this alone would justify the existence of this initiative.
Did I Just Describe Twitter, Classroom 2.0, or the World Wide Web?:
Some may argue that much of what I described above already exists in other spaces, and perhaps then, there isn’t really a need for this. I would argue that we should proceed anyways for at least two important reasons. First, much of what I see on Twitter, and elsewhere, can be quite shallow, lacking depth, and for many people new to these networked spaces, entry can be frustrating and difficult. This is not so much as a critique of the Twittersphere, but more so, of the medium. Educators need a rich set of tools and experiences to encourage deep learning, and I feel that thoughtful design and guidance can provide this. Second, spaces like Twitter are becoming increasingly controlled and restricted. We are losing the ownership of our own conversations and learning spaces. Though admittedly a grand ambition, I hope that the process of developing an #unmooc, while providing a rich place for learning, can help us become more thoughtful and considerate of our learning spaces and the control of our discourse.
So did you get this far? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.
In mid-August, I wrote a post to gauge interest in a possible Edtech-focused MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) to begin January of 2013. I received a handful of responses on my blog, dozens of Twitter replies (captured in this Storify), and (to-date) 142 individuals stated their interest in participating via this Google form. I believe there is more than sufficient interest in an Edtech MOOC, and so I am very happy to begin the development process. I am looking forward to those who have expressed interest and those we are likely to pick up along the way.
I thought I would share my ideas for the course. These ideas are informed by my initial thoughts on the MOOC (from my experience running #eci831 & blended courses), the growing body of literature on MOOCs (especially the cMOOC variety), informal conversations with individuals (theories, practitioners, students), and the many responses received through the process mentioned in the above paragraph. I also hope to make as much of the planning & development of the MOOC open & transparent so that others can understand and learn from decisions made around tools, technical processes and pedagogy. Thus, I will be doing my best to gather documentation, and I invite others to do so as well. I hope that the ‘making of’ the MOOC will be as valuable as the MOOC itself.
Ideas will be shared below. I will then copy the headers into an editable Google Doc so that facilitators/participants can write, edit, add feedback or sign-up for key roles.
What should this MOOC be about?
I am hoping that this MOOC will be developed on the topic of educational technology & media, a broad-ranging and continually expanding area of study. I believe that this MOOC can be relevant to all educators (P-12 school teachers, instructors, professors) and learners across a number of educational systems. As well, it is my hope that the MOOC is accessible and relevant to participants across the globe, wherever there is access to Internet technologies.
Some possible topics may include, but are not limited to the following (in no particular order):
History of educational technology in teaching & learning.
Digital citizenship, digital identity, footprint, ethics.
Privacy, edu. business models, terms of service – what to know about web services.
Digital storytelling & other non-literary modes of expression.
Memes, viral videos, and how information spreads.
21st century literacies (whatever that means).
Openness in education (Open educational resources, MOOCs, etc.).
BYOD initiatives, responsible use policies, and other ed. leadership topics.
Future of … (technology, schooling, education).
Again, these are just a few suggestions. I’m looking for your feedback. I think that once we refine the list, we can start scheduling and finding individuals willing to facilitate these topics (and others that have not yet been suggested).
Beyond the content itself (outlined above), I am hoping that the greatest benefit of this course will prove to be be participants developing resilient personal learning networks, forming the habit of connecting with others to facilitate independent learning goals (both planned & serendipitous), and nurturing online communities based upon sharing & transparency.
How should the MOOC be organized and/or facilitated?
It feels traditional, but I assume we will need to come up with a time-frame for this experience (start & end date, semester framework?) and methods of facilitating content/connections (e.g., live seminars, networked writing spaces, microblogging, newsletter, etc.). Other logistics needing to be discussed may include:
the bridging of educational sectors (K12, university, tertiary).
development of global nodes of activity, time-shifting, & having localized events.
assessment (peer assessment, do we need assessment?).
credit (badges, peer developed, localized approaches, no credit?).
development of peer mentorship relationship (support participants at various levels).
involving the less connected (e.g., teachers at schools who would have never heard of a MOOC but could be supported & encouraged locally/globally).
development of participant blogging (or other publishing) spaces to decentralize the learning environment.
development of a common hashtag (#etmooc?) and other ways to aggregate data (such as Downes’ GRSShopper or tools like http://paper.li)
a central aggregation site for course information (like http://eci831.ca)
development of a research agenda/protocols/ethics for those wishing to study this experience.
getting people interested & involved &Â sustaining participation & engagement to avoid MOOC dropout.
What do we need to make this happen?
What tools & processes will we need to develop the content? Timelines? Responsibilities?
What tools & processes shall we use throughout the course?
Who shall we invite to facilitate? How do we develop localized nodes?
Who’s going to help, and what role will you play?
In the online form featured in my first post, I broke down participation into four major roles: development/planning, session facilitation, online mentors, participants. Obviously, individuals could choose more than one role. Am I missing anything?
For those who would like to help planning/developing this MOOC, consider signing up for the #etmooc Google Group. If you have a suggestion for a better place to collaborate, please let me know.
Thanks to everyone who is considering some form of participation in this experience. I look forward to working with you and making this experience beneficial for those interested in exploring technology & media in education.
“… ten years ago, not one student in a hundred, nay, one in a thousand, could have produced videos like this. It’s a whole new skill, a vital and important skill, and one utterly necessary not simply from the perspective of creating but also of comprehending video communication today.” (Stephen Downes)
If you follow my Twitter-stream, you know that I spend a lot of time viewing, collecting & sharing videos. In this post, I share ideas on certain types of videos that I’ve gathered and how educators might use related methods or styles to engage students in constructing and deconstructing media while becoming critical consumers and producers of digital media.
1) Conversation with Future Me/You:
“A Conversation with My 12 Year Old Self: 20th Anniversary Edition” is a recently popular video by Jeremiah McDonald. In the video, McDonald has created an interview with himself through the use of 2 decade old footage that he created as a 12 year old. The video had me kicking myself for not having the forethought to have produced something like this, but I suppose there’s always interviewing my 60 year old self at some point.
While presenting with my brother George (he’s likely blogged about this somewhere) in Australia this past Summer, I remember him discussing how this activity would be an excellent beginning/end of year exercise that students of all ages could enjoy and learn from. I agree. If done well, this type of activity could provide a student with not only a rich assessment of learning/growth throughout the year, but provide individuals with a precious artefact to be collected, shared, and cherished.
Another angle for this activity could be to create a video or a dialogue with a literary, historical or popular media character. This Vader/Skywalker version of McDonald’s video may give you some ideas.
Genre-shifting video projects are valuable in a number of ways. As video creation projects, they would not require a high-level of technical ability. In fact, I would argue that students with basic video editing capabilities could create videos like these from a purely technical perspective. However, if done well, such projects could challenge students to think deeply about the grammar of storytelling while considering essential elements of creating video (e.g., music, timing, edits/cuts, effects, pauses/silence, etc.) for various genres . As well, students would have to acquire a keen eye for the curation involved in finding & gathering elements that would support a chosen genre. But, even without offering students a hands-on component, these videos would be great for discussing questions around how film directors/producers make us feel a certain way through the thoughtful use of various edits & visual/auditory/stylistic elements.
I would love to see schools take on a video project such as this where elementary school students were responsible for writing, narrating and recording audio stories and then had middle school or high school students act out and lip-sync the video in creative ways. This could provide an onramp for greater collaboration amongst teachers, across grade levels, and also provide a project that would be humorous and fun for the entire school community to view.
Projects like this could help students gain skills needed to become more effective communicators with digital technologies, skills that are essential in our attention-scarce reality, while providing entry points into a wider comprehension of literature & popular media.
What I like about these videos is that there is so much variation and creativity among these pieces. There is no simple recipe or formula and from a technical standpoint, the method for creating stop motion effects is done in a number of unique ways. And, if you consider a video like “Amateur” by Lasse Gjertsen, you will realize that stop motion is more than just choppy video. Rather, it’s a method of construction that allows artists to create things that could not be formed similarly through other methods. Gjertsen states at the end of his video, “I can neither play the drums nor play the piano”, yet through his video editing mastery, he is transformed into a talented musician.
6) Course Trailers:
Back in 2007, I used a course trailer to provide information and to get potential students interested in the open online course I was introducing. It was a fun experiment and I’ve since had many people interested in taking on the idea. I just noticed this Vimeo Channel from Harvard where there are a number of good examples.
The conciseness of the course trailer has similar advantages to what was expressed above about the plot synopses. However, I also think that educators taking on projects like this not only learn a lot from creating the project (e.g., technical skills, core focus), but also, it can provide a message to students that you are willing to push your own learning and have some fun while doing it.
7) Summaries of Learning:
For the past several years, I’ve been asking my students to create a “Summary of Learning” that captures and describes growth and key learnings throughout our course. Students have utilized a number of different formats of video to take on this task (e.g., stop motion, vlogging, podcasts), but the most popular format has been screencasting. Popular screencasting tools used include Screenr, Screencast-o-matic, and Camtasia (and a bunch more here). Dozens of examples of these summaries of learning can be found here but to get a sense of the different types, I’ll point you specifically to Leslie’s (stop motion), Lauren’s (video on identity), Kevin’s (traditional video cast) and Matt’s (stop motion + Photoshop).
This assignment has been very popular with mystudents and I’ve been quite pleased with the results. Our students need the opportunity to reflect on their learning, and providing them with alternatives to written summaries helps to improve their communication abilities while providing potentially rich artefacts of and for learning.
8) Kutiman-Style Mashups:
Kutiman’s 2009 Thru-You project was a great inspiration to me and many others. In the project, Kutiman curated samples of music from various amateur musicians on Youtube to create original musical pieces. Time Magazine named the project one of the best 50 inventions for 2009 as it was an unique way to both curate and combine samples. Recently, Gotye, inspired by Kutiman’s project, released a mashup encompassing samples from dozens of covers from his own song, “Somebody I Used to Know”.
There are two major things I like about these projects. First, I see this as moving beyond the ‘digital essay’, to achieve what we’ve always wanted to do in classrooms, to take and build upon the work of others and while doing so, to create something uniquely original and new. And second, this type of project allows student to play within the boundaries of fair use/dealing, not to only better understand copyright, but to execute our rights in current/emerging copyright legislation. If we do not act upon our rights, we are sure to lose them.
9) Video Re-creations:
My brother George introduced me to Ton Do-Nguyen, the sixteen year old who recently created the Snuggie version of a Beyonce music video. If you watch the side-by-side comparison, it is easy to see the incredible skill and attention to detail of this young man. And to know that he learned this on his own without any formal instruction makes this even more amazing.
I don’t have many examples of this type of thing, not that I don’t think there are any, but that I just haven’t been looking until now. But I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the process of discovering, recreating and reverse-engineering complex editing processes like seen in this video must lead to deep learning, and thus I do believe this is a worthwhile type of project to pursue.
10) Social Commentary & Critique:
9 year old blogger Martha Payne recently made headlines when her Scottish school district tried shutting down her NeverSeconds daily food blog, one that critiqued the quality of food at her school cafeteria. Ewan McIntosh outlines the series of events in his blog which eventually led to the school district backing down from the ban after increased media pressure and bad PR.
This type of social commentary and critique is greatly lacking in our schools. I would love to see more students take on social causes of interest, to speak their minds in support of change, and to learn how to do it with candour, respect and persuasion. We have the ability to look into a camera and record our words and to be heard locally or globally. Yet, is this happening in school? Let’s make sure it is – let’s be sure to educate this generation to take advantage of these new forms of empowerment. If we are not heard, if we do not engage in these participatory forms of media, I fear these freedoms will not be around for long.
