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I feel like I’m slacking.  Because I find myself snacking when my fingers should be clacking the keyboard.  But I find myself lacking, whether it be motivation or inspiration, and every post I read just sounds like quacking in my head.  Instead of cracking the whip, I’m backing away from the blog.  I think need to start hacking my habits, packing up my insecurities and attacking the very thing that got me to where I am…  this blog.

First of all, I apologize for those last few lines.  But once I got rhyming, I couldn’t seem to stop.  Probably ought to delete it, but I’m proud of it in the same way I’m proud of the awful poetry I wrote when I was in 7th grade.  And yes, I still have it all.

I haven’t posted anything since that pre-ISTE post.  Know why?  Because I felt like I should put up an ISTE roundup.  Which I never did.  And now I feel like it’s too late.  Which it isn’t.  But it isn’t fresh anymore so it really is.

And that’s what’s causing me no end of issues.  It’s not reality, it’s my perceptions of reality.  That blogging is a big deal, and I need to make it significant.  Instead I avoid the blog, which means I avoid writing, which means I avoid delving into my own thoughts and exploring them.  And that’s not a good thing for me.  I miss it.

Want to hear how fragile my ego is and how much my own lack of effort in this area affects me?  I have been avoiding reading blogs lately because when I read them, I get riled up, and then I want to write about them, and if I don’t, I feel guilty about not doing so.  And to avoid feeling guilty about not responding at length to someone else’s post, I avoid reading those posts at all.

Strange eh?  Also makes me wonder just how many posts on Teach42 I’ve put up ‘apologizing’ for not posting more.  Too many I would think, but I’m not going to look.

The reason for this post (about time I got to it, eh?) actually has nothing to do with any of that though.  It’s because I wanted to mention how much I enjoyed this video from WGN.

I ‘liked’ it, which shared it out via The Facebook and Twitter, but then I thought I ought to put it up on the blog.  But the last blog post was that ISTE post, and do I really ant to follow it up with a TiltShift video?  And that’s when I realized just how self-destructive I was being.  And a little hypocritical to say the least.

So no apologies, no promises.  Just some insight into what makes Teach42 tick.  Hope you get a laugh out of it and say, “Well, at least I’m not that schizzy!”

And yes, that is a serious question.  I really enjoyed doing the last podcast and had a few thoughts bouncing around the ol’ noggin yesterday afternoon.  So I said, “What the heck, let’s let it roll…”  Recorded another podcast during the drive home.  Two in one week, will wonders never cease?

What prompted it was that I created a page for Aiden to record his own memories, things that are important to him and things he thinks are worth noting and preserving.  It’s on Posterous right now, and the idea is that whenever he sees something he likes or wants to remember, he tells Jess and I and we’ll take a picture of it or give him the camera and let him do it.  Then we send it over to Posterous and it’s preserved on his own page.  We put a link to that page on the Lenovo in his bedroom, so he can pull it up at any time and scroll through it.  Photos, Videos, and once he begins writing, he can send text there too.  And of course, if he wants to create his own video blog entries and talk to the camera… well, we’d be happy to accommodate.

I created that yesterday.  But it got me thinking… if he’s actively recording and publishing at age three, what does that mean for when he gets into kindergarten??  Let’s face it, he’ll be doing it independently before long.  And once he can, how long will it be before he earns his own iPod Touch, with camera and microphone and video and all?  And once he has that, how long before he’s actively documenting his own life and learning?

Not long at all.

Now take that idea, and follow it through a few more steps. . . . . . .   You thinking what I am?  Listen to the show to find out.  And then let me know what you think.  In particular, answer me this:

Is three years old too young for an account on YouTube?

Click here to download the podcast.

Newsweek recently covered a new phenomenon in the college application world:  the YouTube supplemental application.  Sound crazy?  The writing has been on the wall for years.  More and more often, videos created by students are getting seen by hundreds of thousands of people, leading to job offers, internet fame, and other opportunities.  It’s why media literacy is such a critical lesson for students to learn.   But several universities have taken this idea to a new level.

As a supplement to the regular forms, schools like George Mason University, outside Washington, D.C., Tufts University, outside Boston, and the College of William & Mary, in Virginia, are giving students the option to stray from the traditional essay and advertise their best qualities on YouTube. “Say something about you,” reads the Tufts application. “Anything goes,” prompts William & Mary.

Let’s face it, in the traditional college application (or job application) there isn’t much room to demonstrate exactly who you are as a person.  Does a list of your activities really demonstrate who you are?  Does it allow them to hear the passion in your voice or see the depths of your commitment to the things you’re interested in?  Not really.

Allowing for a video submission creates an open platform for students to really demonstrate what they’re all about.  That’s a good thing.

However, it can also have the complete opposite effect.  I’ve seen some bad digital stories.  Heck, we’ve all seen some notably awful videos on YouTube.  What kind of effect will a bad video have on an application?  The whole idea raises a slew of questions.  Would a video of a shirtless student twirling fire help or hinder someone with borderline SAT scores?  Will a short rap be enough to put a student over the top in the eyes of an admissions department?  And beyond all that, what about application videos that go viral?   Are they to be judged based on views in part?  How long do you think it will be before an application video leads straight to job offers, bypassing the college entirely?

We’re entering into a completely new era right now.  The tools are becoming so simple and convenient that every process we take for granted is being re-examined.  The tricky thing is that we need to be preparing our students for THIS world.  Whether you agree with the changes or not, I’m guessing they won’t be going away.  Right now it’s colleges.  Soon it will be jobs.

How long will it be before you have the option of turning in a YouTube video when you apply for a new teaching position?  And are you prepared to do so?

While en route to England, I had about 8 hours of time to kill. One way that I filled it was to download all the presentations from the recent TEDxNYED and watch them on the iPad. Truly a treat to say the least.

While there were several that I think are worth watching, there was one presentation in particular that stood out, and it seems I’m not the only one that thought so. I’ve been a fan of Dan Meyer’s blog for several years, and while I admit that I don’t read it regularly, when I do there’s always something that catches my eye. However, I’d never seen him present before. When I saw his TEDx presentation, I was floored. The way he broke down the issues with most text books just blew me away.

Take a few minutes and watch his presentation and then answer this question: If you could edit your textbook, wiki style… what changes would you make?

Enjoy.

As you watch this video, consider what these students will look like when they enter your classroom. Honestly, will they care one whit whether you put their first and last name on the same page as their photo? Will their parents insist that you keep their identity private… or will they insist that you exhibit their learning publicly?

Is your school prepared for students that will have a larger digital portfolio before they enter kindergarten, than most of us educators have as adults?

Enjoy:

For example, if the students are expected to learn about different types of waves, he wouldn’t ask them to write a report, or to create a powerpoint, or to make a collage. He would ask them to demonstrate their knowledge. If they chose to create a video podcast with original music and lyrics, then so be it. If fact, so much the better.

I love the idea. Make it clear what the goals are. Make it clear what you’ll be assessing them on. And then give them some freedom. I think they’d certainly appreciate having the freedom to do some self-expression, and who knows what they might learn in the process….. in addition to the actual curriculum they were supposed to learn. Bonus perk, you aren’t wasting extra in class time on this. It’s up to them.

One other example, so long as we’re on a musical kick. Check out this video Lisa Thumann shared on Twitter.

You may say, “But the video doesn’t truly demonstrate their knowledge! I mean, could a student really learn anything just from this YouTube video?” I’ll let the author of the video respond, by sharing a comment he left someone asking that very question on YouTube.

This video was a project to summarize trig formulas and to create a song parody. It’s not intended to be a a study guide.

Here’s a suggestion for doing well in trig. Read from your textbook; don’t go on youtube to get your answers.

Janet English over at KOCE has been hard at work putting together the Film on the Fly video challenge and yesterday was the big day! Early in the day, she sent out a text message to everyone who signed up with the prompt: “Everything changed – when the box mysteriously arrived at my doorstep.” The challenge was to then grab your cell phone and create a short story (2 minutes or less) based on that prompt, filmed entirely on your cell phone. The results have already been fantastically creative. You can see the videos over at their group ning, FilmontheFly.ning.com.

Two of my favorites so far were Hall Davidson’s, who actually did his while in the security line at the airport. You gotta see it to believe it. Yes, he got his phone back and the men with the rubber gloves were surprisingly gentle! My other favorite was a Dr. Seuss style incredibly creative story featuring hand drawn images.

Matt Monjan and I are in Pennsylvania together right now and decided to team up for it. We shot the entire thing on my Nokia N95 and then did just a touch of editing. We used iMovie 6 and pieced the entire thing together in about an hour or so.

If you think this looks like fun… well, it is. And if you’d like to be a part of the next one, you can. The next Film on the Fly is going to be on 3/14: PI DAY! I can’t wait. To signup, visit FilmOnTheFly.

So here’s our entry. Hope you enjoy it!

Consider it your weekend video break.

Via a Tweet from BudTheTeacher, I found a link to WeberTube. If you check it out, you’ll find it’s remarkably similar to YouTube, except with the abilty to upload pictures and documents as well. Users can create profiles, rate videos, watch them there or embed them elsewhere. And it looks GOOD. I was so impressed that I poked around until I found a link back to the application they used to build it.

I’d never heard of it before, but it turns out to be an Open Source project called OSTube.

osTube is the first content management system for media content (MCMS) – a basic framework for creating websites similar to YouTube, Veoh, and Revver. After the successful release of osTube 1.0, 2.0 and 2.1 we have just published the brand new 2.2 version of osTube – a quantum leap in player-functionality and CMS-scalability.

A complete revision and further development of current features as well as numerous new features guarantee even better usability of the framework. Also, many features requested by the osTube community are now part of version 2.0. The addition of AJAX, social bookmarking services and extended search capabilites are just a few key-aspects that will make the implementation of osTube more seamless than ever before.

There are premium versions available that allow you to insert ads into the videos, rotate banners and other such silly things. But for a school, the community FREE version is just peachy. On the backend it looks like you can maintain all the controls you might want, including moderation, video approval queues and other such things.

Pretty darn sweet considering the price. Definitely worth checking, whether for public consumption or for use behind a walled garden.

Think you are a Virtual World Guru? Then share just how many of the worlds in this video you have avatars in!

Just in time for the beginning of the school year, Dalton Sherman has a message that is sure to inspire anybody who has chosen to devote their lives to education.

Without a doubt, video streaming is going to be major at the conference this year and the real challenge is figuring out where it’s all happening at. Many will be announced on Twitter, but it quickly became apparent that more organization was going to be needed. Will and I have had several conversations on the topic and have decided to create EdStreamTV.

What is EdStreamTV? It’s a television channel created by Mogulus that we will use to be the live video home for streaming video at NECC. Think of it as NECC TV, complete with live coverage, repeats of presentations, and an on demand library of content available to be watched at any time.

We recognize that different people are going to use different sites to broadcast at NECC. Mogulus will let us pull them all in together. It can handle live feeds, even from multiple cameras and mobile devices. It can import in videos of many different formats. It can import in YouTube videos, videos from uStream, and many other sites as well. It can be embedded, has built in chat, and even has a slick little ticker along the bottom that will pull in blog posts about NECC!

We want you to participate! This could be a fantastic way to share the conference virtually, as well as benefit from it long after the conference doors have closed. There are several aspects to the project, and many ways to contribute.

Prior to the conference: You can create a short (30-60 seconds) video promo for the things you’ll be doing at NECC. Presenting? Hosting a workshop? Live blogging? Conducting interviews? Let the world know what you’re going to be up to. Create a short video and tag it with neccstream08 and we’ll add it to EdStreamTV. You can upload it to YouTube and tag it there. You can record it in uStream and tag it there. You can host it on your own blog and tag it there. Create it and tag it, and we’ll be sure to include it in the channel. You can find more details about this here.

At NECC
Streaming Live on your own site: If you’re going to be streaming out a presentation, let the world know what you’ll be sharing, when it is and where they can catch it. You can log what you’ll be streaming live on this page of the wiki so that people can plan accordingly. If you see somebody else already streaming the same session you were planning to, please be considerate of bandwidth and refrain from doubling up. Or contact them directly and coordinate your efforts.

Streaming Live on EdStreamTV: If you’d like to stream out a session live on EdStreamTV, simply contact email@edstream.tv and we’ll register you as a camera person for the channel and coordinate the timing. You will to stream it live via Mogulus though, as we can’t display live feeds from other sites in real time.

Sharing archives, videos, interviews and more: If you have streamed a session and want to include it in the EdStreamTV channel, simply post it on your own site with the tag neccstream08 OR email us at email@edstream.tv with all the details. You can find instructions for several of the more common sites here. Once you submit your videos, it will go into the EdStreamTV loop and repeated regularly throughout the day and will also be available in the On Demand library.

Bloggers Cafe: We will be using the Bloggers Cafe as sort of a home base for the channel. Expect to see live interviews, impromptu events and broadcasts of various happenings throughout the conference. Stop by if you’d like to join in!

We hope that this becomes an integral part of the conference experience, both live and virtual. We look forward to having you join us in this groundbreaking experience!