Finding Online Videos

I  have been collecting a list of resources for locating on-line videos that can be used in class or viewed by students outside of class.  On-line films/videos can also serve as the basis of an on-line class when in-person classes have been canceled because of weather, rescheduled around holidays, or the professor is unavailable in-person. Links to the video can be placed in the learning management system (moodle) or embedded in the discussion forum, with discussion topics or questions. I always have one or two video assignments available on moodle just in case I need them. 

Educational Video and Documentaries

• MCNY Films on Demand Database 
• A.Weiner - Documentary Films - Society and Human Services
• TED Talks  (and TED ED lets you turn videos in lessons)
• Khan Academy
• TopDocumentaryFilms.com
• Hulu.com (also general release TV and film)
• FORA.tv (conference and event video from around the world)
• MediaStorm 
• Green Card Stories - Filmography -Documentaries and Dramas 
• SNAG Learning Films 
• The Society Pages - TSP Teaching - Video Archive 
• FreeDocumentaries.org 

News (All the major TV and cable news networks have on-line video resources)

• NY Times Video
• Washington Post Video
• Wall Street Journal Live
  
• CNN Video
• TIME Featured Videos
• Newsweek/Daily Beast Videos

Broadcast Television

• PBS Video 
• Discovery Channel Video
• National Geographic Video 
• History Channel Video
• Smithsonian Channel

Internet Videos  

• YouTube 
• Google Videos (Video Search Engine)

Miro is a free open-source video and music player. There is also a Miro Video Converter, a simple way to convert almost any video to MP4, WebM (vp8), Ogg Theora, or for Android, iPhone, and more.

This is not an exhaustive list of all the resources available. Please feel free to share your video resources.

Resources for Teaching with Technology

Reposted from an email sent to all MCNY faculty on 5/8/12.

A couple of summers ago I developed a Faculty Development Workshop on creativity to help faculty incorporate online resources into their classes and Moodle shells. As we move forward with our Strategic Plan and our efforts to provide significant course content online, this becomes more important.

At that time I collected a list of web resources that could be used across the MCNY curriculum and placed them in a Moodle shell that was available to all the workshop participants. I still use many of these resources and have added others over the years. Of course some of them have morphed into something different than they were, totally disappeared, or been replaced. New ones have been developed. But I keep finding myself going back to that old Moodle shell to find something.

So I thought about updating this resource list to make it more accessible and since I wanted to try out my new Pinterest account (the fastest growing new social media network), I set up a Pinterest board on "Resources for Teaching with Technology". Piniterest boards are like bulletin boards where you can "pin" pictures from all over the web and add some descriptive text. When a visitor clicks on the picture, they are taken to the original source of the picture. I have also set up some other boards that can be used in my teaching ("Human Services Interest Board", "Documentary Films - Society and Human Services" and "Books Worth Reading"). The film and book boards are in response to questions that students often ask about seeing additional films or recommendations for books.

Please feel free to check out the Resources for Teaching with Technology board at: http://pinterest.com/draweiner/resources-for-teaching-with-technology/.

You can like items, "repin" them to your own boards, follow a board, or write comments. I would be interested in hearing about the creative ways you are using some of these resources. Please let me know about other resources you find useful. Unfortunately not every resource can be pined since some of the web sites do no have usable photographs, which is the main element of a pin. Groups can develop boards since the owner of a board can add others who also have the ability to pin to that board.

We can also talk about how to use Pinterest itself as a teaching tool. Happy pinning.

Have You Discovered TED?

I have been using TED Talks Videos in many of my classes (http://www.ted.com/talks). Many are short and can easily be used as discussion starters and to encourage reflective thinking. The tagline for TED is "Ideas Worth Spreading".

Now they have a new resource for teachers, TED ED (http://ed.ted.com/), Lessons Worth Sharing.  They developed some pre-made lessons, using animators and the TED Talks Videos that can easily be linked or embedded into Moodle. Lessons come with a video, quick quiz, thinking questions and additional resources.

But it gets better, faculty can "flip" the lessons to individualize them for their classes. To Learn more about flipping a video got to http://ed.ted.com/about#/flipthisvideo.

This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED's, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student.

Try it out. I think we might be able to create some interesting transdisciplinary lessons that we can share and used in support of our unique PCE curriculum.

Increasing Class Participation in Moodle Forums

As we begin to move classes online, I have been thinking about how to increase student participation in discussion in forums. In my hybrid classes, I have begun to have independent learning tasks that I want students to share and discuss before our next in-class meetings. I use the "single, simple discussion" format so that students are all in one threaded discussion each week. Each week I have a different task and a new discussion forum.

Even when I graded the student postings or raised questions about their postings, students primarily only posted their answer to the question and didn't respond to others. This pattern occurred even when it was obvious that there were differences of opinions. According to Department of Education guidelines, online course content has to be interactive and should not simply be homework. I wanted to make our online discussions look more like inclass discussions.

The Moodle forum allows faculty to grade student postings by adding up all the points earned on each posting. Only the student themselves sees the faculty ratings. So I set a weekly forum with a maximum of five points. Students earn three points for a good posting  (A or B) that is on time and two points for an adequate posting (C or D) that is on time. A late posting earns only 1 point no matter how good it is and I don't accept any posting over a week late.  So I am requiring students to focus both on the quality and timeliness of their postings. Students earn another 1 point for each relevant, reflective response to another student's posting. Since the total score is set at 5 points, a student who earns only 2 points on their original posting can earn three more for their responses to others. Even someone who does not do an original posting can earn 5 points for the week with five good reflective, thoughtful responses (although no one has figured this out yet). This system seems to have generated some very good discussions. Some students are engaging in dialog and some responding to more than two posts. The total I set in Moodle allows me to not worry that a student will earn too many points as it will not give them more than five. My syllabi identify the value of their forum participation in their final grade.

My ground rules continue to be in process.  Do I want to allow someone to earn the full five points without an original posting? I also need to adjust the time frame, which currently required postings to be submitted before the next in class session, when I usually highlight and discuss the responses for the week. Some people were posting minutes before class so that no one, including me, could read or respond to their postings. And the same individuals were chronically late every week. Some were even posting during class and with students arriving late to class. For the future I am thinking about moving up the dates for original postings to two or three days before the next class and responses to the day before class.

I would be interested in hearing how others are using discussion forums in their classes.