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Should Adults Control Kid-Created Content?

June 5, 2012 | 11:54 AM | By

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Fourteen year-old Adora Svitak wishes that Facebook came up with a popup window that read, “Are you going to regret this later?” before allowing people to post their updates.

It’s that kind of long-term vision that’s missing from a lot of how kids act and how they’re being educated about using social media. And because adults are navigating the same uncharted waters alongside — or in many cases, far behind — their kids, sometimes using what’s considered common sense at the time might not even be enough of a filter.

Svitak is already a fairly savvy social media user herself, having launched her own Facebook brand, website, and even TED talks. She and her peers are pushing boundaries on sites like Tumblr, posting videos on YouTube and creating their own blogs — and getting a lot of traction.

Cases in point: Teenager Rebecca Black’s Friday, last year’s viral YouTube music video (more than 32 million views) and the Kony 2012 video, whose 90 million views was propelled by kids passing it along to each other.

“We are co-creators of the world we live in. We’re not just watching the screen in front of us. Whether it’s good or bad, you can’t argue it’s influential.”

“We can have tremendous influence on the cultural landscape,” Svitak said at the recent Big Tent event in San Jose. “We are co-creators of the world we live in. We’re not just watching the screen in front of us. Whether it’s good or bad, you can’t argue it’s influential.”

She’s got a point there — kids’ influence can be powerful, especially with the help of social media sites like YouTube and Twitter. But unlike the kids who create the content that goes on those sites, the companies that host the content are forced to weigh in on whether it’s “good” or “bad,” or more pointedly, what they should do about it.

Victoria Grand, director of communications and policy at YouTube, said company staff is constantly searching for questionable content and deciding what action to take. For example, a spate of Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, blocked sites, Internet filtering, Social Media, YouTube

Life in a 21st-Century English Class

December 21, 2011 | 3:10 PM | By

Creating a Common Craft-style video is part of the classroom assignment.

By

I  teach in an inquiry, project-based, technology embedded classroom. A mouthful, I know. So what does that mean? To begin with, I don’t lecture. My students don’t take notes, at least not in the traditional sense, and we don’t read a novel and simply answer the questions.

It means my classroom is a place where my students spend time piecing together what they have learned, critically evaluating its larger purpose, and reflecting on their own learning. It also means my students don’t acquire knowledge just for the sake of acquiring it. They need to do something with it — that’s where “project-based” comes into play.

Finally, technology is embedded into the structure of all we do. It’s part of how we research, how we capture information, and how we display our learning. It’s never an accessory tacked on at the end.

In my English classroom, this  looks a lot different than in my biology and chemistry classrooms (which you can read about here). My English curriculum is largely skills-based, which provides a fair Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching Strategies, Facebook, project-based-learning, YouTube

YouTube Offers All Schools Education-Only Link, Beefs Up K-12 Content

December 12, 2011 | 8:58 AM | By

YouTube

All schools can now use the YouTube educational video site, youtube.com/education, without having to jump over Internet filtering hurdles.

For schools that choose to opt in to the YouTube for Schools Program, YouTube will redirect Web users who go to the site straight over to youtube.com/education. On this portion of the site, all comments are disabled and the only related videos are those that can be found in the Education portal of the site. The option has been created for parents, teachers, and administrators who fear children will be exposed to inappropriate materials on the site.

Teachers can choose from the hundreds of thousands of videos on YouTube EDU created by more than 600 partners like the Smithsonian, TED, Steve Spangler Science, and Numberphile.

After two months of piloting the YouTube For Schools program with more than 100 schools across the country, the program is now available to any school that wants to use it. Schools can sign up at youtube.com/schools.

And as promised, the site has been beefed up with content specific to K-12 education — thousands of more videos curated by teachers that align with Common Core Standards, according Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Digital Tools, Teaching Strategies, TED, YouTube

YouTube SpaceLab Launches Student Experiments Into Space

October 10, 2011 | 10:03 AM | By

SpaceLab

YouTube and NASA are challenging students to design a science experiment that can be performed in space. Students from 14 to 18 years old can upload videos of their experiments onto YouTube’s Space Lab website.

A panel of scientists, astronauts, and educators, including Stephen Hawking, will judge the entries, and the two winning experiments will be conducted on the International Space Station 250 miles above Earth and live streamed on YouTube.

“The idea of seeing something you conceive and build in your ordinary classroom being actually flown on a rocket, being actually sent to the International Space Station, being actually carried out by a national, is the stuff of fiction. We think that is going to be the thing that gets kids excited,” said YouTube’s Zahaan Bharmal, who conceived of the challenge.

“The idea of seeing something you conceive and build in your ordinary classroom sent to the International Space Station is the stuff of fiction.”

NASA’s counterparts in Europe and Japan are also participating in the worldwide initiative, as are Lenovo and Space Adventures.

More details: Students in two age categories, 14-16 years old and 17-18 years old, either alone or in groups of up to three, may submit a YouTube video describing their experiment to SpaceLab. From the entries, six regional finalists will be brought to Washington, D.C. in March 2012 to experience a ZERO-G flight and receive other prizes. And from that group, two global winners, one from each age group, will be announced and later have their experiments performed on the ISS.

The two global winners will get to choose either a trip to Tanegashima Island, Japan, to watch their experiment blast off in a rocket bound for the ISS, or once they’re 18, a one-of-a-kind astronaut Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching Strategies, NASA, SpaceLab, STEM, YouTube, YouTube.com/Education

YouTube Lets Schools Opt for Educational Videos

October 10, 2011 | 9:59 AM | By

Flickr:www_ukberri_net

Teachers who have been frustrated over blocked access to YouTube educational videos in school can take heart. YouTube is rolling out a pilot a program with schools that will redirect all YouTube links to educational content on YouTube.com/education. In addition, comments will be disabled and related videos will only be educational, both of which are a source of anxiety around exposing kids to inappropriate content.

Each school and district has a different kind of filtering system, but this workaround allows schools that block YouTube at the domain level to access it through YouTube.com/education, according to Angela Lin, head of YouTube Edu. Schools interested in participating in the pilot program can sign up at YouTube.com/t/education.

“We need to give educators and administrators the tools and resources they need and have them decide what’s best for their students.”

YouTube plans to add hundreds of thousands of more educational videos onto the /edu site (which was launched two years ago), including videos from the Museum of Modern Art, BBC Earth, the Smithsonian, Big Think, and many more. Until now, most of the content on /edu has revolved around higher education, with lectures from MIT, UCLA, U.C. Berkeley and other universities (with the very notable exception of the Khan Academy videos, which are aimed at K-12). Newly added content will be focused more on K-12 curriculum, as well as post-college content — what’s referred to as “lifelong learning.”

“We recognize there is demand for educational video, and we’re trying to provide access to it, as well as catalyze content creation,” Lin said.”Ultimately we need to give educators and Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Digital Tools, Teaching Strategies, blocked sites, Internet filtering, YouTube

Applying the 7 Golden Rules: One Teacher’s Take of Technology

October 4, 2011 | 10:31 AM | By

TB

In response to the article The 7 Golden Rules of Using Technology in Schools, teacher Patti Grayson wrote a point-by-point summary of exactly how it plays out in her class. Here’s her take.

By Patti Grayson

Along with some colleagues in our lower school division, I lobbied to use money normally spent on workbooks and paper instructional materials to buy a classroom set of netbooks for our students. We’re only a month into the school year, and already, Bellow’s golden rules have served me well. Here’s how they apply to my fourth grade classroom:

  1. DON’T TRAP TECHNOLOGY IN A ROOM. Best. Advice. Ever. If technology is used properly, it is a natural extension of learning – as useful as a textbook (and often more so). These days I say “Grab your netbook and…” more frequently than I ever thought I would. For students, this new way of instruction is seamless. When we are creating our own questions about a topic or digging deeper for information, they’ll ask, “Mrs. Grayson, can I get a netbook and look it up?” The netbooks have also provided the opportunity for daily keyboarding, blogging, math practice, web tool exploration anytime we have 15 minutes to fill.
  2.  TECHNOLOGY IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Can I hear an amen? Bellow points out the wellspring of teaching knowledge accessible through YouTube and Twitter, and yet many of our teachers need help learning to wield these social Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Culture, Teaching Strategies, Skype, Technology in Schools, YouTube