Jul
22
Thing 19: YouTube
July 22, 2008 | Tagged 21st_century_classroom, Blue_Man_Group, global_warming, media, video | Leave a Comment
YouTube has an amazing range of material. I am familiar with what my kids like to watch, and some of the popular political videos from Jib Jab. I decided to search with broad topics. First, I searched “democracy” and found quite a bit. Most would be over the heads of 5th graders. I decided to go for more current event type of topics and searched form global warming. The video embeded above is from the Blue Man Group. It is very entertaining but it is persuasive at the same time. I found other videos related to global warming and decided to watch one that promoted the need for humans to change their ways, and one that promoted the idea as media hype. I thought it would make an interesting study to look at the way ideas are presented in the media and identify the persuasive arguments.
On TeacherTube, I found this video about the 21st century classroom. It’s really a slide show you read. It emphasizes three main points about learning: competition, cooperation, and collaboration. It was very inspiring and gave me many ideas about how to facilitate learning. The first step is perhaps most simple – organize the classroom for learning to foster competition, cooperation, and collaboration. Interestingly, the competition presented is both within the classroom, but more importantly, with students in others places in the world. The real competition in their future in the 21st century.
