Nerve Wracking!

I had some success with embedding videos into my blog after last spring when I had a graduate student come and do his dissertation research involving blogs and videos in my class, but before that I hadn’t really used it much. I understood how to embed things from other sites using code provided, but I always thought I should be writing not showing off techie stuff on my blog. Oh, well, that would be wrong! :)


So the part of using multimedia on my blog is that I can go overboard. (If you need proof, look at my avatar post--I got a little carried away.) Last spring I was a video embedding fiend because I had just learned the skill and in order for me to learn something well enough to remember it, I have to do over and over again. Behaviorism obviously worked on me.


Here is a video called Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years in 4 minutes by the BBC. I have used it this week in my graduate class to discuss using video for teaching.

We actually watched it twice at their request because they wanted to see if they had missed anything the first time through. I asked some questions about why certain things happened when and they gave interesting, thoughtful answers. I think this video can create lots of good discussion for students of all ages.

As far as how I am going to use this, I think maybe I will do a poll on which avatar to use as a way to add a different type of multimedia to my blogging. Or maybe not! I just went into Blogger to add this post and the list of ways to embed code is not there! Hmmm, wonder what happened to that item on the tool bar.  I guess I'll have to go and read the Blogger Blog. (Acutally, I was thinking of Wikispaces and their widgets, so never mind that last little rant!)

So maybe this is NOT as nerve wracking as I first thought.

What do teachers need to learn?

This song and video from Kevin Honeycutt in Kansas makes a great case for teachers to catch up with the kids already! What do think about this video? Please leave a comment.