Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Image via CrunchBase YouTube's initiative to add original programming to their site is producing quite a few "channels" of interest to the educator. It would make sense to set up a YouTube account for your school id and have a filtering system that lets you bypass to get to these great resources. YouTube is a distribution system and like all distribution systems: books, podcasts, etc. it has been criticized for content. It is and always has been: what content do you access that determines how well it is used. So, here's a roundup of some of the YouTube channels you may wish to add to your YouTube subscriptions. Now, I just have to get on my Roku to determine the best way to bring these into my living room. The Open University  - Produced by open.edu there are many topics here and ratings on their website, but now the content is being syndicated to YouTube as well. Check out the website for free courses and close captioned video. Yale University courses ...

Teacher Dan Parker from Toronto, Ontario posted a class video called " Moonwalking on the Sun " about the challenges of being present in the classroom when your mind is moonwalking on the sun (with a hat tip tribute to Michael Jackson.) (Dan posted this on my Facebook page which is a place I go where people share things and I learn a lot.) Some cool creativity here. So, the video isn't perfect "theorectically" for lots of educators whatever and some won't care for it, but it grew on me and I liked it. I'm actually singing this song to myself now as I write this. The thing about is this - I bet their minds weren't moonwalking as they made this video. They look like they spent a ton of time on this AND ENJOYED IT. Do things the students enjoy. Bring them IN to the classroom. Credits: Rappers (in order of appearance): Warren, Fiz, Chris, Leo, Brian. Narrator: Ed, AKA the Ice Cream Man. Song production, vocals, video editing, coach: Mr. Pa...

A far cry from the usefulness of the more mature Discovery Streaming , and yet this free educators website from National Geographic is going to be infinitely useful for educators. Link: http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/edu/ They have done a good job of segmenting their views by audience. Teachers , Informal Educators , Families , Students , Kids all have their own view. This is smart. They also have a lot of free tools for educators and a very interesting Geography Alliance to promote Geography literacy and some useful material on the Japanese earthquake. The more non-fiction multimedia companies do to organize resources, share, and help those with common learning interests network - the better off we'll all be.

My dear friend Kevin Honeycutt is, to me, everything good in a keynoter and a person. He is a family man. He is smart. He is musical. He is hilarious. And on top of that he is so so right on so many things. He has long been my friend and I hope will continue to be. I first saw this three years a go at NECC - we had a band "Tweetwood Mac" out of about 5 -6 ipods (before the iPad was out.) Sitting on the floor with him messing with gadgets is truly the highlight of every NECC/ ISTE for me. That is what he does - he "messes with things" and as he does it he will teach you a whole lot! He talked about in this video that iPhones aren't just devices they can be instruments and also makes the poignant comment: "Don't marry Apple, Android has a lot to offer also." Watch this video for a great laugh and a look at just a great person in education.  Way to go, Kevin, I'm a huge fan. And I hope against all hope I can get to Podstock one day!  Ke...

I enjoyed talking to the delightful Prantika Das from India when I was in South Africa. This video shows me several things: 1) the evolutionary nature of innovation and 2) the power of putting handhelds in student's hands.  There are great teachers doing amazing things throughout the world. Innovate or become Irrelevant! This is part of an ongoing series of video conversations that I filmed while in Microsoft's Innovative Teacher Forum in Cape Town, South Africa. Next year is in Washington, DC so find out information for how to apply in your part of the world! Related articles Got a Great Project? Share!! #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Six and Seven Year Old Boys Collect 8 tons of waste in "Trash to Treasure" #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Moleihi Sekese: Integrating Technology with No Electricity? #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) My Study Mate: Students in Ireland Hand Coding and Maintaining a Video Sharing Site #msief (coolcatteacher...

David Walsh and Ursula Hynes from Ireland share their cool site ( http://www.mystudymate.ie/aboutus.html ) that started as a school project. In this fascinating project the students hand code in HTML (yes, by hand) and create videos on various topics. They are inviting other schools to participate and it is growing. Related articles Shout Learning: Listening to the Organizers #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Moleihi Sekese: Integrating Technology with No Electricity? #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Student Sourcing Science: Shout Learning Announced at Microsoft Innovative Educators Conference #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Six and Seven Year Old Boys Collect 8 tons of waste in "Trash to Treasure" #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Microsoft VP Anthony Salcito: Getting Technology to the Next Classroom #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) [ #msief ]: Use stumbling blocks as stepping stones: Moliehi Sekese, Lesotho (edu.blogs.com) [ #msief ...

  Moleihi Sekese from Lesotho, Educator's Choice award winner 2009 for the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum, is a teacher who has no electricity in her school.  While studying endangered indigenous plants, she began by having students borrow parent cell phones to text her their observations about the endangered plants. ("I was receiving texts until midnight, she said.) Moleihi Sekese The students had a bake sale to raise money to go to the Internet cafe in town (15 km away) to blog. When they wanted to raise awareness about protecting endangered plants, they had teachers bring charged laptops to school so they could scan the hand drawn images and make flyers in Microsoft Publisher. To create a botanical garden growing these plants, they raised money to go to a botanical garden and filmed how to create their own. They produced the film and then went home and watched it to re-learn the steps for making their own garden to grow the endangered plants and protect the...

"There may be trouble ahead But while there's moonlight and music And love and romance Let's face the music and dance Before the fiddlers have fled Before they ask us to pay the bill And while we still Have the chance Let's face the music and dance..." Full Lyrics by Irving Berlin Woke up this morning (Sunday) at 5:30 am - way early. (something about being 40, my husband says!) This old Fred Astaire movie was on and as I pondered the struggles and ups and downs of life. As I thought about school starting in three weeks, this song just truly resonated with me. Above is a youtube video with Nat King Cole singing. We are where we are. All we can do is what we can do. Freak out. Stress out. It does no good. Sometimes, you've just gotta face the music and dance.  Enjoy your summer, my friends in North America.

Edutopia has launched their new Digital Youth Project and just shared the video with me that they did of my classroom this year.  Some things make me cringe (ok, my room stays a bit messy) and the students are all over the place - up and down.  And yet, this is my classroom, my students are great, my school is a joy and it is a blessing to teach! Next Thursday Virginia (my student that was profiled) and I will be in an edutopia webinar (sorry I cannot find the link!) This is the Video about Virginia - one of my students!

I'm experimenting with posting directly from diigo -- I've annotated and highlighted from the original post from my friend Shmuly Tennenhaus. My friend Smuly is a youtube expert -- he's been on many nightly news programs and in newspapers (see the New York Times article on him.) I'm still turning over the thoughts from his blog post that he shared.. he has made a few good points that I had to go back to teacherTube to see. We have to use teachertube on horizon because it is the only video sharing service that is unblocked in all of our schools. We are cross posting to youtube for those schools that allow youtube access. SchoolFinder Blog » YouTube Versus TeacherTube Annotated My notes: He has been cited multiple times for his videos and has been on more news tv shows than i can count. He does know video! - post by coolcatteacher Many schools do block it for bandwidth reasons. - post by coolcatteacher Some highlights from the article: "Video-sharing ...

This is your inspiration for today! Whether you are from the US or not, this video does two powerful things: 1) It helps the kids envision themselves as making a difference and 2) it puts things in perspective for us. I have a renewed sense of what is important. What do you think? tag: education , teaching , digitalstorytelling

I know this is a promotion for the new Indiana Jones Movie , but I love the quote at the end: Indiana Jones' son "You're a teacher." Indiana: "Part time." (hat tip to basler on twitter ) The romanticized part of me wants to think that there are a lot of us out here who teach and then do really exciting things on the side. And I could talk about that. But really, I'm just excited about a really cool movie! Actually, the Indiana Jones movies and Star Wars movies got me through college. When I would study for 18 hours a day, I would put these on my trusty VCR and play them in the background so I wouldn't have a pity party about having to study so much at Georgia Tech. These movies are an anchor for me. They are part of who I am. Maybe this is why I love to use movie clips to teach. Some of my favorite clips are: Samwise Gamgee's speech from Lord of the Rings - Yoda and Luke Training "Try not. Do or do not. There is no try." I te...

Kudos to this video by Darren Draper. Kudos because this is the way that staff developers should be developing staff. I daresay this one video over e-mail will do more to motivate staff and get them talking than an hour of being "preached to" about Web 2! Using Web 2 to teach Web 2 - what a novel idea!? It is powerful and amazing. (Thanks to Julie Lindsay for pointing it out over at Twitter.) Staff developers -- are you encouraging your staff to make videos such as this? Is staff development stuck in Web 1 or is it modeling Web 2 as it teaches Web 2. Darren, you have made me think! Wow! Do you blog?

I dedicate this to my mentor and the inspiration who got me started, David Warlick . He's been talking about the power of video in telling the story of technology in education! I am now preparing for my first conference, the Tech Forum in Chicago and with the help of some of my students, I have created a video that expresses how I feel about the state of technology education. I base many of my opinions upon what I read from the Computer Science Teachers of America (CSTA) so I consider it fact, not opinion. It applies to many other countries around the world. If you have a youtube account, I invite you post a video response on youtube to this question: Why do we need to use technology in schools? OH, and thanks to Danita Russell for tipping me about Teacher Tube, I've uploaded the video there as well. Perhaps it should be unblocked for many of you. tag: education , teaching , Vicki A Davis , coolcatteacher , youtube , , technology standards , wikis , learning