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YouTube for Schools – pass or fail?

December 23, 2011 in tools

Only for you

There’s quite a bit of debate going on surrounding Google’s recent release YouTube for Schools and I just have to dip my toes in and make my own views known. Will it be good for schools? Or will it constrict access to a wealth of educational material not deemed educational? Pass of fail?

YouTube for schools is described as being ‘comprehensive, school-appropriate, customisable and teacher-friendly’ and after trying it out with my own school’s Google Apps YouTube domain I have to say that it is all of those. The ‘comprehensive’ tag is what seems to be causing the most negativity. Why? The videos that form part of YouTube for Schools are selected, from the many millions available on YouTube, by Google and a select group of organisations such as Stanford, TED and the Khan Academy. This at first caused me some concern as it meant I could have access to a very limited form of YouTube video content deemed suitable by others. I’ve been fighting against such restrictions for the last 15 years of my teaching career and my initial reaction was not to sign up to something so limiting. Fail.

But I consider myself a teacher that tries out new technologies, for better or worse, so that others can learn from my adventures. Let’s go back to the descriptive tags. ‘School-appropriate’ gives schools access to material they deem suitable which means any video a school thinks is educational can be added to that school’s YouTube for Schools site. As a teacher or admin, you have access to the complete wealth of material that is available on YouTube which you can then decide for yourself whether it is school appropriate or not. YouTube for Schools requires signing up for a school account, the creation of one admin account and then changes having to be made in the school network configurations. Additional video content can then be added to a school playlist which can be accessed by all users within the school’s YouTube site. Admins can also grant unrestricted access to any user in the school site. Pass.

Is YouTube for Schools nothing more than a walled garden? Not quite. It’s a walled garden with a large gate. You can restrict content to a water shed of predefined videos which contain quite a few chalk and talk presentations. Not very inspiring at all. But the gate can be opened and you have access to any video you as the admin or staff deem appropriate. You will still be able to search for that one moment that perfectly enhances the learning in your classroom and then mark on the playlist for the school to access. Students will be able to access YouTube at school with no worries that they will view unsuitable material, especially important in Primary schools. Pass.

It’s too early to say whether YouTube for Schools will be successful or not but it’s definitely not the closed garden that is being suggested. I’m not passing or failing it, yet.

What do you think, pass or fail?

Edit

After going over this post I have reconsidered one particular option, ‘admins can also grant unrestricted access to any user in the school site’ in the school-appropriate description. As the school ICT coordinator/Lead Technology Teacher I would consider myself as the holder of the school admin account and use it to set up other teachers with additional features to add content they too deem suitable. However, what if the school admin account is held by a member of staff that doesn’t want additional content to be added? What if the admin account is held by technical staff that wish to keep access to YouTube content locked down? That’s one too many ifs for me and therefore is a big FAIL.

Tags: classroom tech, discussion, google, learning, resource, teaching, web 2.0, youtube
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Hanging out on Google+

December 16, 2011 in Resources in the classroom

Classroom hangouts

Google+ has vamped up its Hangout feature so that you can share documents, presentations, a drawing board and, if needs must, block a user. These extra features are not part of the regular Hangout but can be accessed very easily before you initiate a hangout. I’m certain that these features will become standard and after using them with a wide variety of users I am certain that they will add impact to classroom teaching and learning.

My aim is to gather together educators and teachers from all over the world so that they can use Google Hangout in their classrooms. There are various uses such as

discussions based on country origin
worldwide discussions
debates
sharing ideas
one teacher teaching to 9 connected classes
collaborating on project based learning
finding out about another country
story telling
peer to peer learning opportunities

Google+ is not available to under 13′s but as an educator we have access to every available feature, so why not consider using it in your own classroom? If you want to get involved leave a comment, share the post with others or/and fill in the form.

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Tags: activities, classroom, classroom tech, creativity, discussion, e-learning, google, ideas, inspiration, learning, presentation, resource, sharing, teaching, technology, web 2.0
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Cross curricular gamified learning

November 28, 2011 in gamification, learning, lesson ideas, Resources in the classroom

Over the next 2 weeks I will be using a collaborative working plan based on the story of Santa being lost as part of my gamified learning in the classroom. I started the plan using Google Docs and posted a link to it on Twitter, within half an hour the plan had grown to 5 pages of cross curricular ideas and activities. You can acces the doc and add your own ideas to the plan here.

To begin the week I used the following presentation. The first slide takes time to work out but my class got there after a few questions and answers. One thing you must try to do is to take a step back, do not rush in with answers. Let the learners find the solution, give them time. Let them finish their ideas and accept every idea as part of the solution because even incorrect answers will help find the correct one. I decided to put ( ) around the 2 numbers and that did the trick, immediately a lot of voices told me the numbers must be coordinates. So off they went to find were the coordinates would lead to. They found Santa was on Henderson Island part of the Pitcairn Islands , located in the South Pacific Ocean. It’s very remote so Santa truly needed their help. The next slides let them think first about what items they would take from the list to help Santa survive. They had to discuss with each other why they would take certain items and I listened in to many interesting suggestions e.g. Santa really needs to take the chocolate because he can not only eat it, he can make a drink out of it so that’s two out of one! Many of the children automatically wanted to build rafts but after looking closely at their Google Map they thought it might be better to sit tight on the island until help arrived.

Searching formed a huge part of the challenge, children had to use search strings to find specific information that could help them decide what to do to help Santa. Wikipedia articles were quickly scanned for important information and shared with the groups. Each group went off on different though flows to begin with and even after collaborating with each other, many stayed on their original courses with just a little variation. One group is convinced that Santa can survive a journey by raft to Pitcairn Island so tomorrow my additional challenge to them is working out how long that journey might take.

Towards the end of the morning one group hit on a fantastic idea. They had been using the Google Map to decide if using a raft would be a good idea but then hit on staying on the island until help arrived. Why? I asked. One girl in the group called me over to demonstrate how she had used Google Maps photo layers to discover that there were quite a few photos taken of the island by visitors on boats! She quickly came to the conclusion that the islands were actually not as remote as first thought and used another search online to discover visitpitcairn. It was an exciting moment as it was one area of Google maps that I had not shown to the class but obviously one learner had. She quickly demonstrated her skill to others and very soon everyone was using the photos plugin of Google Maps to view the photos themselves.

A mystery awaits

View more presentations from Kevin McLaughlin.

Every day I use the gamified approach I am more convinced it is a wonderful method of inspiring children’s curiosity and develop their creative problem solving. With today’s emphasis on assessments for learning, testing for league tables, ‘playing the game’ to stay off Ofsted’s radar, gamifying your learning may be risky to some but it is certainly worth it.