Teacher as video producer? Well, yes.

Teachers starting a career, like recent KSC graduates, are expected to be competent in various technologies in the classroom.

Prof. Yi Gong

Yi Gong makes sure they are by teaching them to use, among other tools, digital storytelling.

The digital stories are a combination of pictures, text and voice-narration which are output into a video format. Students create videos suited to the student’s grade level to introduce a subject such as a fractions or adjectives or money .

Prof Gong gives a one and a half hour workshop on how to use the free software Memento Express to create the video stories. Student who are initially nervous are soon excited with what they can create so easily.

“The challenge is not the technology,” says Professor Gong. “It’s creating a learning module that is focused, age-appropriate, engaging and makes good use of the medium. “ Here are the stories of four students
Allison Valenti,  Chelsea O’Brien,  Christina Collins and Sophia LaFleur

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.

Niall Moran, Sociology, has made Blackboard work for him. At a brown bag discussion on October 14th, Niall shared how he uses the gradebook to keep students constantly aware of their progress.  Some of the things he does to make it easier for students are:

•    Adds a “My Grades” button to the Blackboard navigation menu
•    Removes unnecessary items on the Blackboard navigation menu

Niall has also been experimenting with quizzes on assigned readings that need to be completed before class.  He created short multiple-choice, computer graded quizzes for each reading assignment and made them accessible in Blackboard.  Students can then determine whether or not they have grasped the main points of the reading before class.

It has made a great impact on the level of discussion in class.  “I see hands, now,” he says. “Students are in a much better position to participate in class when they have completed the assigned reading.  Blackboard assignments help ensure that they read before class.”

If you would like assistance with Blackboard or would like to to share how you use it with your students, please contact Linda Farina, Blackboard Administrator at lfarina@keene.edu or  358-2381.