Finding scholarly videos and podcasts for teaching

Not being able to speak from a teachers point of view, I can talk from a professional point of view. Video has to be my most go to source of information when I’m trying to learn something. Likewise, video is one of my favorite form of media to distribute as a guide when it comes to complex concepts. This usually consists of screen-casts, images and occasional narration.

I am also familiar with TedEd, and I love the short, knowledge packed videos. If you’re ever bored or on a boring train journey these are brilliant. Most of the videos are no longer than 10 minutes making them a brilliant study resource or boredom buster!

Ever wonder what static electricity really is and how it words? Check out one of my favorite TedEd videos: The science of static electricity

Exploring Flickr

Like I mentioned in my previous posts, I’m not one to share a lot via social media channels therefore I have not used Flickr much. Neither have I ever uploaded to it. On the other hand, I can see the benefits of using such a service. Its simple to use and you don’t have to worry about storing files locally – they are always available as long as you have an internet connection.

When it comes to teaching using Flickr, the way I envision this being used is not so much in the classroom but more so for collaborative work outside of the classroom. At the LSE we ran (and are still running) a pilot called ‘Students as Producers’. This allows the students to produce a video or some form of media to a related subject (in groups). They get marked on the media they create. This allows for the divergence from the classic exam based assessment. Flickr would be a great way to facilitate this. With the ability to set permissions it would allow for group work to be private. After this, why not make it public!

source: visualpun.ch – Flickr

Mindmaps and flowcharts

Out of the suggested mind mapping tools and flowcharts I decided to give Coggle a test. It looked rather nice for a free tool. Turns out, it is. I really like it for the simple fact that you can just start creating without any major fuss. Log in, and you’re ready to go. Unlike some free tools out there Coggle is also visually pleasing and doesn’t look “cheap”.  When it comes to explaining a complex concept I can see this tool being pretty good. You have the ability to branch out in a structured and well presented manner. Making the flow of information very easy to follow, read and understand.

source: Flickr – Kevin Gilmour

One tool that was not mentioned but I came across previously is Popplet. I like this tool a lot. Its very simple to use, the fact that you can embed YouTube & Vimeo videos into the “popplet” adds another dimension to flowcharts / mind maps for me. This app is also available on the Apple devices, so you can access and create your popplets on the move!

In one of my training sessions I suggested this as a revision tool for students. The way I see it is; if a student was studying ‘continents of the world’ they could create a popplet with the continents listed and add notes, drawings and videos to each continent for future reference. So when it comes to revision, all they have to do is go onto the popplet and all their notes and useful videos will be in one place! I think that’s much better than a notebook, but that might be due to my poor notebook organisation skills! Check out my example here: http://popplet.com/app/#/2587009

You can even have a go without signing up: http://popplet.com/app/#/demo

Open Educational Resources

The way I see MOOCs is possibly slightly different to others. I can see how and why they are useful but I believe they could be used in other ways to benefit students more. I cannot see them replacing a teacher and classroom environment, but it doesn’t have to! The problem I found during my education is the fact that during primary,secondary, high school and even college (I did not go sixth form and therefore cannot comment on this) we are spoon fed. We sit in a class room and listen to the teacher impart their knowledge to us. Then, we usually produce a bit of work to show we have been listening and been a good student (with a small exception at college). This process of learning and being “educated” reminds me of the image below.

Spoon feeding – Wikipedia, Uploaded by Snowmanradio

Then we reach university, and students are miraculously expected to know how to carry out research and write good quality reports whilst paying attention to the copyright laws. The first year of my degree I spent most of it trying to figure out all of the above, and become good at it. After all, I had a dissertation looming and I had no choice but to get good at the skills needed to be able to pass. This stage reminds me of a fledgling (baby bird) learning to fly. Take the jump, and hope for the best.

source: imgarcade.com

That’s enough of the negative side of things, now onto the positive. I believe that MOOC type courses or even units should be introduced into high schools and colleges. This will allow students to slowly step into the cruel world of university level education with significantly lower levels of risk. In the process, learning how to carry out research independently whilst thinking about the problems of copyright do’s and don’ts. Alongside this, with the current popularity of the flipped classroom pedagogy this will prepare students for this type of learning which is bound to get more and more popular as technology influences education further.

Don’ get me wrong, I’ve not given this idea too much thought and there are plenty of flaws to this I’m sure. With the help of gamification I don’t see why this could not be a viable way of introducing students to the skills they need to make their university journey easier at an earlier stage.

On a side note, looking into learning technologist based MOOCs it was immediately obvious that out of the 3 big MOOC providers, one was better than the others; OER Commons. A quick search provided me with multiple and related MOOCs unlike the other two providers.

Copyright and Creative Commons

The development of the world-wide web blurred the line of copyright. It’s nice to see things like Creative Commons being respected and growing in popularity. Not only does the author get the well deserved credit, but other internet users benefit as well!

It would be nice to see more of this mentality within education, and instead of everyone holding on to their work but instead sharing it and contributing to a much wider audience. They say sharing is caring.

I did find that when searching for material via creative commons, it’s sometimes hard to find a “good” image. But then when I think back to a few years ago when I was asked to create a website as part of my studies and had to include rich media such as images; it was much harder to find good quality images back then. Even though this was only about 2 or 3 years ago, the amount of content that can be found now compared to then under the creative commons license is incredible. The more people who share, the better this will become. Who knows, maybe in a few years time this will be the norm!

This below is an image I found on Flickr via the creative commons search. This is a great image and one that can be used in teaching. Maybe to discus the opinion of the statement seen in the image.

Technology is a given not a debate – Scott McLeod, Flickr

Twitter

It was my first time using Twitter the other day, thanks to TiDA. I did have an account but this was set up for testing when I was carrying out my testing for my dissertation. Like with anything that’s new, you don’t really know the rules; the do’s and dont’s but Twitter reminds me of a fancy RSS feed. You follow people / companies / organisations and then their information or tweets trickle into your news feed.

Much like the RSS feed, I think this is a very good way of surrounding yourself with people and information you care about in a very quick and concise way. Alongside this, Twitter seems to be getting more and more popular slowly displacing Facebook – making it the place to go to, to get the latest gossip, trends and news!

Like I said in my previous blog post I’m a couch potato, I hardly ever post things online. Therefore, I cannot see myself contributing much, but I can see myself following people and organisations that I find interesting and those that will help me stay in the loop of the latest news within the technology world.

Exploring social networking

When it comes to social media / networking, I consider myself as a couch potato. I have accounts on most social media sites, but I don’t actively participate in sharing / contributing. I’m more of the catch up with the latest news and events type of guy. My other uses of social media (Facebook more specifically) is to socialize / communicate with friends and family I have abroad.

LinkedIn on the other hand, well that’s one of those that at times goes untouched and unchecked for months at a time. Unless i’m actively looking for a job, I tend to be very inactive on this platform. I do however think that slowly but surely, this is replacing the traditional and old school C.V and covering letter. Its a great tool for networking and getting your skills out there to a much wider audience.

Personally, I think time is running out for social media. I’m not sure if i’m the only one with this view but lets face it; whether its Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Google+ the core of all of these is the same. Like this, share that, upload this. I’m not sure if its just me, being a techie and being used to everything changing so quickly and new things coming out in short succession of each other but social media is a bit stale. Thanks to social media, I am very familiar with a lot of peoples diets and favorite songs. This was interesting a few years ago, not so much now. 

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are a great way, for many people, to keep up to date with their interests. Personally, I’ve not used them much. My extent falls to using Flipboard as it was pre-installed on my smart phone and using RSS within Moodle (VLE). The best thing about RSS feeds is that you can choose what goes into them, unlike the likes of some social media sites.

I tested out Feedly, as this was one of the recommended sites. I liked the simplicity of adding content to the feed and the contemporary feel of the website. Its something i can see my self downloading on my smart phone and scrolling through on my morning and evening commute.

Opening up access to readings

Keeping up to date with the latest research and news is important. It’s not always an easy task as often it is hard to find quality information. As part of this task we were required to look up some readings from the following sources; the LSE Research Online & OpenDOAR.

Using the LSE Research Online resource I searched for papers relating to Economics. Not being an economist myself, I cannot rate the contents of the material. On the other hand, carrying out a quick Google search on the authors and you can tell that the information provided is of top quality and is trustworthy. Using OpenDOAR I searched for papers relating to the world economic crisis. This too brought up good quality resources.

I think such resources would be of much more use when compared to Google & Google Scholar. Although Google Scholar did provide me with good quality papers, some I could not gain access to. I believe that allowing free / open access quality resources would be of great benefit to students. Saving them time, and making the already laborious job of research a little less taxing.

Inquiry based learning

Although I do not teach as such, I have often ran training session in which I’ve implemented Inquiry based learning. A brief outline of what the session would be like goes as follows:

1. Introduce session and main objective
2. Split up into groups (size depends on number of attendees)
3. Create a task / scenario and ask attendees to create a thought-shower using an online app as a group. Usually limit this to 10/15 minutes to minimize distractions.
4. Provide attendees a link to Popplet which will allow them to create their thought-shower (as well as to save and / or export it)
5. After time is up, ask all to submit their answers into Moodle where all submissions can be viewed and discussed in class.
6. Summarise and conclude the session.

I do find that this type of teaching takes a little setting up prior to the session, but this is out-weighted by the participation and engagement of the attendees.