So here we are in the 21st Century and still stuck with 18th century schoolrooms and 19th century desks.
I've been exploring different seating arrangements for groups, and still like the easy mobility of wheeled chairs, central gathering places, and ways to quickly create breakouts of small groups that can still see the teacher/board and report back without too much furniture noise.
This younger children's class (described by Amy Spies at TeachingChannel shows a nice option using the furniture at hand:
The groups of four are open-ended at the side facing the teacher/board, and the space between the desks holds a 3-drawer cabinet with supplies like paper, pencils and crayons:
SteelCase offers a much higher tech option, adopted at the U of Oregon's Yamada Language Lab, that is sleek and classy. Three boards/projection screens allow students sitting in any direction to see what is happening. The teacher is no longer fronting the class--at least in theory--though the computer/projector now seems to be the center:
With the flipped classroom, the projection multiplication may be a bit of overkill, but at least there is a strong move to put students' heads together.
Recently I tried to organize and curate my YouTube channel to better effect. My first problem was that as an inveterate Mac user, most of the videos on my desktop were in .MOV format, and even though this was purportedly a YouTube-supported format, I could not seem to upload some of my videos.
Some of the most popular video formats supported by YouTube (directly from their Help site:
• WebM files--Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codecs
• .MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files--Typically supporting h264, mpeg4 video codecs, and AAC audio codec
• .AVI--Many cameras output this format--typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM
• .MPEGPS--Typically supporting MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio
• .WMV
• .FLV--Adobe-FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio
The only error message on the YouTube upload page was something to the effect that "There is a problem with your file." After much trial and error, here are some things I learned about video file formats and YouTube.
Believing the .MOV file format might be the problem, I tried about half a dozen free video converter software apps on my long video. None of them would convert a video of any length for free, despite plastering the word "free" all over their download sites. 100 MB is about the limit without paying extra, including online converters.
I finally came across QTAmateur.app at the Mac Update site. Despite the dopey name, this little software is very powerful and converts to many different video formats quite easily, including those usable by PCs and mobile devices. And it is an absolutely free download. Use ("Export" to make the conversion.)
This was a fortunate find, as I want my videos to eventually be playable on mobile devices as well as on desktops.
I still had a problem, in that YouTube kept saying something was wrong with one particular file, even though it was quite small when converted to mpeg4. It turns out that YouTube goes by time, not file size, and allows only 15-minutes maximum play time. However, when you verify your account using a mobile phone number, Google will send you a text code that gives you up to 2-hour lengths.
YouTube is very non-informative about this fact, and it probably relates to an improvement resulting from Google taking over YT. Maybe the help pages and links will be improved in the coming months.
I found the information about how to get the extra size files (the link didn't just jump out at me) by searching videos in YouTube (of course). I found several, the best and simplest of which, I think, is How to Increase Your Upload Limit on YouTube.
With an officially "verified" account and armed with the increased upload limit, I got my video up. See The Effects of Technology on SLA, a talk I gave at TESOL New York, 2008, in either .avi format (a little clearer, below) or .mpeg4 at my YouTube channel. Just FYI, this was originally a Powerpoint slideshow saved as a Powerpoint movie.
I may yet get around to putting the .mov version up, but you can play it with most video players on most platforms anyway.
I was directed to 280 slides by Nik Peachey's Ten Teacher Development Tasks for Web2.0 Tools (yes, I am still slogging on with them...) The presentation tool is really fun to use, and here is my exercise task completed. It's for intermediate students, who watch the two videos and make notes using an online dictionary, thesaurus, and/or translator, then write up a description of "My Favorite House."
You can also send the embedded video to Slideshare, or email it to friends.
My writing activity is very similar to Nik's, but I gave it different twist by using pairs at the computer, some online vocabulary resources, and a writing process with note-taking and discussion built-in.
WallWisher is not as useful pedagogically as other social networking tools I can think of.
You can add a picture (from a URL), or video, or audio file, but it doesn't have a way to put a URL into the text (without using up the tiny letter count), so that users can easily go visit the site. If you want to illustrate your sticky, you need another place/server/or knowledge of how to get an image location to stick it in. You can post to Facebook, et al., and link to pictures in Flickr.
The limited number of words/letters on a sticky means you can't say much--this is probably an advantage for young learners, but not necessarily for their education. A blog or wiki would give them the opportunity to be more expansive.
You could have a main sticky and then ask students to respond to it. But there is no way to organize the stickies besides moving them around physically. So this means the teacher/owner of the wall must do the work of organization, or let things happen at random. (See Nik Peachey's wall of teacher tools for social networking.)
So on the whole, I like the idea of a communal blog or wiki better: more opportunity to write expansively, ways to comment, RSS feed, easy ways to include URLs and lots of pictures, and esp. with a wiki, ways to organize pages.
But I can see Wallwisher as a way to make comments on an event or single Web page. You might have students visit a page or view a video (or put one into a head sticky), and then make a short comment on a Wallwisher page. If you have only 15-30 students, they could all read each other's comments (but if they then make more comments, you've quickly got a huge, disorganized mess...) If you use WallWisher the way it was intended, perhaps to wish a class member happy birthday, or to congratulate someone on getting citizenship, or to make a wish list, or to put up reminders for a project, then it's a nifty application.
You can share, upload to a blog, iPod, or YouTube, create a DVD (at $24.99), and download (also a premium feature) but not store for viewing on site. The DVD is supposed to be high quality.
If you have trouble seeing the video player, click here: Avery in Alice 6/13
These podEnglish language learning videos are unique in that they are based on social situations, e.g., vocabulary for discussing fear, as well as particular content topics.
Check out the tab on the right of the YouTube video, >More From: podEnglish, to see several dozen different topics. The videos are obviously intended to be used as ipod lectures.
This is an amazing new app from Google that allows instant texting, email combined with live/real time bulletin board, and shared pictures á la Flickr. But that's not all--you can blog and embed the pictures and continue the conversation live via the blog or social network, e.g., on Orkut. Anyone can join in at any point in the conversation, and get a playback of what went on before--or create a private "thread" on the side with specific users. Best of all (for some) it is open source, so you can make your own applets for it.
...is really something of a misnomer, since it is more a blog where students can practice various grammar and syntax items using questions and exercises set by the teacher, Claudio Azevedo (Casa Thomas Jefferson, Brasilia), with the prompt being video clips (professional), rather than a textbook.
The video at Movie Segments is a really nice motivator, and the questions and exercises have a good deal of subtlety, deploying a cognitive approach that engages the student and goes beyond sheer grammar. It is also a nice expression of how a blog can be used instructionally. Frequent updates are promised.
--Thanks to Ronaldo Lima, Jr., on the Webheads' list for the referral
Overstream is an interesting way to put subtitles over a video online, e.g., from YouTube. (And I am curious about why it is a dot net...)
Of course, you have to be able to understand what they are saying/singing to begin with. But I like the idea as a way to further develop video materials for use with students learning/studying a language: They could do the subtitling.
Although I have found it inconvenient for users (and me) to have interactive widgets on this blog, one of these might be useful for a wiki page as it could be more self-contained.
Suggestions from the Webhead elist include (from Robert Squires):
Yackpack - the Walkie Talkie Widget formerly available directly on PBWiki, and which has Voicegroups.
Meebo - you create your own chatroom and paste the code into the sidebar of your wiki or blog.
Gabbly - the PBWiki default, was mentioned several times as having horrible advertisements that you can't get rid of. However, any person who visits the wiki can chat with other visitors who are there at the same time while with Gtalk or Meebo, the visitors can only chat with the owner of that widget (ie.e, the creator of the wiki) but not with each other (per Negiz in a responding email).
Robert also offered an interesting blog site with a list of ten more chat widgets: ReadWriteWeb.
I followed this breadcrumb trail and found an interesting site, built by Kiernan, that strings together YouTube videos so that you get continuous play, one after another, on a particular subject (in this case rock groups). Anyone can add a video without a password, though this feature might present problems in a school setting. Nice code, though a little removed from the original subject, chat widgets: http://www.chann3lz.com/.
