Post by Matthew Ragan - -

As I mentioned in the “YouTube is my Homework?!” presentation on 1/14/10,  there are tremendous resources available on the net for video. These have great potential both in and out of the classroom, but the hard part becomes finding and distributing these pieces of media. Finding something relevant can be as easy and simple as a Google search, or it may take some more time to find the piece of media that illustrates your point (or counterpoint). To help you along in the process of finding some of the good stuff, here are a few places to start the search:

NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/

National Geographic
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/index.html

The Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org/index.php

PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/programs/index.html

The Discovery Channel
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/

TED
http://www.ted.com/

Teacher Tube
http://www.teachertube.com/

Calculus on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/patrickJMT#g/c/58C7BA6C14FD8F48

Research Channel
http://researchchannel.org/prog/

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/edu

The Smithsonian
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/site/smithsonian/video/

Book Videos
Interviews with Authors
http://www.bookvideos.tv/

National Archives
http://video.google.com/nara.html

Teacher’s TV
http://www.teachers.tv/video

University of California Television
http://www.uctv.tv/

Academic Earth
Courses from Yale, Columbia, UCLA, and MIT
http://www.academicearth.org/

Video Lectures
http://videolectures.net/

Harvard at Home
http://athome.harvard.edu/

Open Courses at Yale
http://oyc.yale.edu/

Georgetown University
http://webcast.georgetown.edu/

Cornell University
http://www.cornell.edu/video/

What makes a fair trade athletic shoe company better for the environment? What is certification in fair trade and when does it matter? How can a company regain control of its inventory?

Students in Tamara Stenn’s Integrated Quantitative Literacy class, Measuring Fair Trade, are answering these and other questions for real fair trade businesses.

Stenn chose the topic of fair trade based on discussions with her management students. Those students recommended fair trade as a topic that interested them. Stenn then interviewed 12 companies to see if they would be a good fit to work with students. She chose six, based on whether the company was open to suggestions and whether the managers were available to work with students.

Student teams worked with company staff to choose an issue or problem to work on.  Teams displayed their results in a website that they create using Google Sites. Some  of the companies will be linking to this student work from their own websites.

Tamara talks about the results of the student projects, both for students and the businesses.

Student Lauren Vignola’s enthusiasm for the class is obvious. She loved the project, working in a team and learning about fair trade from the inside out.