Tech Savvy Teacher

SUP228 --Best Practices in Fair Use for 21st-Century Educators

2009-06-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

It's only Day One of the NECC 09 conference and already I feel like I could leave tomorrow, a happy woman. I already gotten more than I came for in this trip!

Yesterday, some colleagues and I did the White House Tour. I applied for tickets last January and we were fortunate enough to get in. The Obamas have made their lives in the White House so much more visible than previous presidential families. It was an honor to trace paths that they cover every day and to see the public rooms of state first-hand. The docents (FBI agents?) were personable and knowledgeable historians and contributed greatly to the experience. From the front gate, I was able to see the vegetable garden that has gotten so much press. And while shooting photos, Obama came out onto the balcony, causing an uproar from cheerful crowds shouting his name. He waved back to us!
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SUP228 Best Practices in Fair Use for 21st-Century Educators
Renee Hobbs, Temple University, Media Education Lab with Katie Donnelly, Kristin Hokanson, Michael RobbGrieco and Joyce Valenza
Sunday, 6/28/2009, 12:30pm–3:30pm WWCC 145 A

Today, I attended a pre-conference workshop on Copyright Confusion, put on by a team of educators from Temple University who are the creators of the new fair use doctrine, BEST PRACTICES IN FAIR USE FOR MEDIA LITERACY EDUCATION. (You can download a copy of the doctrine here).

The Temple University team are no lightweights in the area of copyright law. Their research was funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. They also were backed in their efforts by Peter Jaszi - Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic at American University Washington College of Law. Peter is quoted frequently in their videos. The Fair Use doctrine has already been adopted as official policy by the NCTE.

These people are like rock stars to me. I was familar with Media Education Team Leads, Renee Hobbs and Kristin Hokanson because I've seen their training videos so many times. But the big surprise was uber-exhuberant Michael Robb Grieco, who is the author/producer of the two music videos, Copyright, What's Copyright and Fair Use/User Rights, Section 107 . He is a caricature in his own videos! Michael's songs bring clarity to issues that might otherwise be difficult to explain. They are pure genius.

I have been using the Temple University Media Literacy materials this year to educate school administrators about the new interpretations of copyright law. The team has done such a superb job at developing and sharing teaching materials, (videos, lesson plans, case studies, worksheets etc). The copyright tune comes with a lyric sheet which I like to turn into "Copyright Karaoke." I warn my own workshop attendees that those songs will be spinning in their heads all day. You may even find yourself singing them in the shower.

Kristin's classroom scenario case study is the deal-breaker in all of this, as a real-life application of the doctrine of Fair Use. A brilliantly-executed exercise with a class of high school students, it shows all of us that not only do we have to train school administrators, gatekeepers, librarians and classroom teachers, but also copyright owners need an education about the rights of users.

The Temple University team has developed an assessment Tool for Reasoning Fair Use which allows students to exercise their critical thinking skills to decide if their choices and uses of copyrighted materials are appropriate under the new guidelines. Kristin says that the worksheet for students was developed after her classroom scenario case study and that it would have been a helpful tool to guide her students.

One concern expressed by educators in California is that they are afraid to hold open houses for parents and community when students have developed media-rich presentations. They fear that they will be called to task on issues of copyright infringement. Since the Best Practices interpretations of Copyright are so new, I highly recommend that educators use an Open House as a learning opportunity for the community. It would be fairly easy to use students as teachers to explain the new concepts.

Hall Davidson has always been the King of Copyright Law in education arenas. Those of you who have been using his famous charts on Copyright from 2002 will be happy to know that he has also switched over to this new reinterpretation of copyright law. In fact, Hall has an excellent video on Fair Use Section 107 that totally supports the message of the Temple University team.

Because I was familiar with the Best Practices in Fair Use document and the training materials put together by Renee Hobbs, I knew walking into this workshop that it would be life-altering for those in attendance. It was almost as much fun for me to watch their changes in attitude as it was for the presenters.

The big disappointment was that this workshop was not a sell-out. It should have packed the house!!! Teachers everywhere are involved with use of media-rich materials for teaching and learning. Perhaps the title wasn't catchy enough - or maybe educators simply don't know that all of the rules have changed.

Everyone who came to this workshop walked away invigorated and eager to share their new knowledge! Those who did not come, missed out ... big-time!

Look for the NECC workshop wiki here. You can also find the complete set of curriculum and training resources at http://mediaeducationlab.com/

Twitter as a Personal Learning Community

2009-04-01T22:30:00.000-07:00

I am often fascinated by the number of people who simply "don't get twitter!" They see it as a waste of time.

Celebrity usage of twitter has brought it to the forefront of attention in recent months. Twitter is also regularly cited by the mainstream press. Every news anchor and talk show host seems to have a twitter account these days! With all of the media attention, droves of new users are flocking to Twitter to check it out. For celebrity watchers, it's like a backstage pass into their lives. But for professionals in just about any field, the true value of twitter isn't simply reading about how one person goes about their day. Nor is it simply a place to drop by and announce to the world that you're at Starbucks having a cup of coffee. For quite some time now, astute members of this microblogging community have come to recognize Twitter as their own personal learning community.

I am on Twitter for mere minutes each day. Yet, there is rarely a day when I don't walk away from there having learned something new and valuable. It is the collaboration and sharing of ideas and experiences with colleagues in the field that drives this community. The quality of your experience on Twitter is only as good as the network that you build there. And the more you contribute, the more you are rewarded with new insights and experiences from others who share your passions in Education.

Being in educational technology, learning tools and best practices are constantly changing. The Twitter community accelerates the pace and flow of new information. Educators from across the globe provide first-hand information on how they are using technology for teaching and learning and we all benefit from their experiences. For technology leaders who like to stay on the cutting edge, it's a perfect fit.

http://www.twitter.com

ITOUCH History

2008-01-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year, CTAP Region IV established a partnership with the California Digital Library and UC Irvine History Project to collaborate on ways to promote best practices for teaching with primary source materials and to show teachers how to incorporate technology solutions into their teaching in ways that will excite and engage students. Two-day educator training sessions were designed with the designated target audiences of history/social studies educators (teachers and library media teachers), primarily in grades 4, 8, and 11. The focus is a study of how different cultural groups shaped California through resource allocations, political authority and social organization.

In a competitive application process, districts qualified to send a team of three (credentialed teachers, librarians and/or technology teachers) to training sessions in both January and March at their choice of two sites. Thirty-three teachers were accepted into the program. In return for the training and resources (Apple ITouch, AV cables and Snowball mic), teachers commit to using Calisphere resources with students and will bring back the results of the learning experience to the 2nd session. Teachers also agree to disseminate the information to colleagues at their site and in the district.

The first session took place on Saturday, January 12th at the Marin County Office of Education. Teachers received an overview of Calisphere Digital Library and were trained by the UC Irvine Literacy Project Director on how to view images as a historian and how to place what they see in a broader context of history. In the afternoon, teachers were put through the paces of learning how to use their new ITOUCH hardware with AV equipment, so they could share images and video presentations with others. The excitement and passion of the day were expertly captured by Cheryl Davis in this video presentation. A second cohort group of teachers will start the training in early February.

In a MacWorld Expo announcement today, Google released a complete new update to the Google web suite with full optimization for iPhone and iPod Touch, which will further add to how our teachers can use their ITOUCH devices. In experimenting with uses of iTOUCH in education, I can't help but think that this is where the Palm handheld always wanted to go, but somehow never got there. The ITOUCH has huge potential!

Writing Tech Plans: PB Wiki to the Rescue

2007-11-05T22:12:00.000-08:00

Writing an educational technology plan that passes the rigors of state requirements can be a daunting task, even for seasoned professionals. If you've ever had to write a district technology plan, you know that it requires:

1. Collecting District documents
2. Organizing teams
3. Distributing Assignments
4. Scheduling meetings
5. Keeping teams on a timeline
6. Monitoring progress
7. Filling in the gaps.

Wikis have become the ultimate collaboration tool for undertaking such a massive project. I like PB wiki for its ease of use, even for first-time users. It's also free. We were able to accomplish a lot, without ever purchasing premium levels of service.

Wikis make it easy to break down a large document into chunk-size, digestable pieces that can be easily written, discussed and edited by many people - even if participants are not housed in the same building or at the same site. Not only can one team see the work of its own contributors, but each team can see how their work relates to another. The wiki also serves as a convenient repository for all of those documents that are scattered far and wide and that are needed for reference in creating the new technology plan.

This year, I worked with five school districts to develop district technology plans. Using PB wiki, I was able to develop a template that could be recreated for use by each district. Once I had a working model, all I had to do was cut and paste the word prompts and localize the links.

For District project leads and me, the best part of the process was that PB Wiki notifies you every time there are changes. Sometimes, that can be a nuisance. But for a time-sensitive deadline, it's nice to have that reassurance that people are actually working! You can see a model of our work at http://dixietechplan.pbwiki.com

A bonus benefit of using a wiki to write a tech plan was that it provided on-the-job training. Administrators and teachers who had never used a wiki before began to see reasons to create wikis of their own.

Google Summer Institute

2007-06-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

HOW TEACHERS SPEND THEIR SUMMER VACATION

The kids are gone. The classrooms have been packed up and vacated. But teachers still have much on their busy agendas. There may be travel, home projects and family gatherings on the horizon, but this was a week for learning.

In Northern California, CTAP Region IV has been host to 50 teachers at two sites where overlapping Google Summer Institutes are scheduled all this week. The four trainers (Kathleen Ferenz, Cheryl Davis, Jerome Burg and Kyle Brumbaugh) are all rock stars with Google-certified credentials and decades of classroom teaching experience! They have pulled together a fabulous roadshow that puts teachers through all the paces of using Google Earth, Picassa, Docs & Spreadsheets, Blogs and Readers -- on their own and in collaboration with others.

On the other side of the Bay, teachers in Day Two of the training are opening blog accounts and posting to Google Groups. Here in Marin County, (where it is Day Three of the Institute), teachers learned how to gather and save photos from Calisphere to the desktop. They created a Picasa photo web album, turned it into a slide show and embedded it in their blog. Whew!

Here are some photos I took last September in Florence, Italy that I happened to have on my laptop in IPhoto. They were easily exported into Picasa so I could bring them into my blog as a slideshow. What fun!

Bad Behavior in the BlogoSphere

2007-03-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

Dan Fost, Tech Editor for the San Francisco Chronicle had a prominent front page/ top-of-the-page story on Kathy Sierra's incident in Thursday's paper. Kathy is an active and widely respected member of the blogging community. After receiving viscious death threats from a cyberstalker, she was forced to cancel a speaking engagement at the ETech Conference in San Diego because she feared for her life. The blogging community rallied behind Kathy and declared March 30, 2007 as Stop Cyberbullying Day, with hundreds of journalists and community bloggers covering this event as an opportunity to educate the public about the cruelties of cyberbullying.

You can find Dan's full article at SF Gate.com

It's disheartening to see this as an adult problem, when we're working so hard to get kids on track.

For information on the CTAP Cybersafety Project, check our web site.

Student CyberFair

2007-03-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

At Bel Aire Elementary School, Principal, Patti Purcell knows how to keep students motivated and excited about learning. Recently, she staged "CyberFair 2007" to give six classes of fifth graders a chance to "show what they know" to family and community. Hundreds of guests packed the school's multi-purpose room as students led visitors through a winding maze of exhibits that showed how digital technologies were used at the school. From robotic demonstrations and digital microscopes to video production and Garage Band, kids were the teachers for the day.

You can view photos of the event at CyberFair 2007

Why not empower your students with a CYBERFAIR, next year!

YouChoose'08 - Political Information Hub

2007-03-25T18:25:00.002-07:00

Presidential candidates have embraced the power of social networking and the online community by putting their campaigns online. Just about every politician in the 2008 presidential race has a video posted on his/her web site. On March 1st, YouTube launched a new "informational hub" called YouChoose '08, which pulls them altogether into one convenient location. Here, voters can connect with candidates, subscribe to videos and send messages and comments to politicians in response to what they have viewed.

YouChoose'08 presents a great opportunity for students to learn more about presidential platforms directly from the candidates themselves. They can compare and contrast messages, formulate their own opinions and let their own voices be heard. Of course, much of the work will have to be done at home or at off-campus sites, since many school districts block access to YouTube.

Post Your Videos at Teacher Tube

2007-03-25T18:25:00.001-07:00

Brothers, Adam & Jason Smith may not enjoy the notoriety or the fortunes of YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen, but they have won the hearts of academicians everywhere with the launch of their new web site, TeacherTube.

Modeled after YouTube.com, the new video and social networking site overcomes some of the obstacles of the larger site by offering 11 customized channels for teachers to upload and share videos of best practices, tutorials and student projects in a content-controlled environment. Videos can be rated, shared with friends, or posted to blogs. Site users can post comments and converse with the video producer. There is a 100MB file limit for uploads. They must be 10 minutes in length or less (same policy as YouTube).

Launched barely three weeks ago, Teacher Tube is the brainchild of husband/wife teachers who understood the need for anytime, anywhere professional development and who wanted to make videos available in the classroom. Living in the “Tech-Beltway” of Texas, they assembled a talent team of colleagues, family, friends, legal and web specialists to help develop and launch the product.

Jason Smith (jsmith@teachertube.com), co-founder of TeacherTube, welcomes your ideas on how to make the site better for teachers and students. Private viewing options are already in place. Some school districts have created grade level, subject area and district group areas where teachers, students and parents can share videos internally. Want to create your own private group? A Teacher Tube tutorial will show you the way.

While you’re on the site, check out Walk-Throughs & Learning Objectives. A parody of the famed NexTel commercial, it’s one of the funniest admin videos you will find.

In addition, you’ll want to sign up for the Teacher Tube 2007 Laptop Give Away, which allows you to earn chances at winning a laptop with every video that you upload to the site.

Swivel It! with Google Spreadsheets

2007-03-22T20:29:00.001-07:00

The geniuses at Swivel do not rest.

Just as you thought it couldn't get any better, they added a new feature: Swivel It for Google Spreadsheets.

Conveniently nestled in your browser toolbar, the new Swivel It! button facilitates uploading files from Google Spreadsheets directly into Swivel. Now, any time that you have a Google Spreadsheet, you can click on “Swivel It” and the data will upload to the site.

Not only does your Google data upload, it also updates. If you change the data on Google Spreadsheets, just press Swivel It! again and Swivel imports the new data.

Capturing video from YouTube

2007-03-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

Our county office of education has a proxy server that filters content for all of our districts to keep in CIPA compliance. Like many places in the country, this means you cannot access YOUTUBE at school. Now that so many great educational and instructional videos are showing up on YouTube, this creates frustration for teachers. As a work-around, you have to download the videos as stand-alones at home and then upload them to a server or virtual disk - or store them on a pen drive.

I've experimented with different ways of downloading the videos and I finally settled on a methodology that I like.

KEEP VID (want it, keep it)...resides on your browser toolbar and captures the video when you type in the URL for that page. Then, WIMPY FLV PLAYER turns it into a file which can be played on either a Mac or PC.

New Cyberbullying Awareness Media Campaign

2007-03-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

Do you know someone who has been cyberbullied? Cyberbullying is the use of Internet, cell phones, instant messaging and text messaging to harrass or embarrass individuals. According to the National Crime Convention Council statistics, 43% of teens have been victimized but only 1 in 10 tell their parents.

The NCCC has launched a new media campaign to raise awareness of the effects of cyberbullying, a problem that has led to teen suicide, school violence and depression. The 30- and 45-second commercials carry the tag line: "If you wouldn't say it in person, why say it online?" The PSA's will air on television and be streamed to sites like My Space.

The council is also distributing the code for banners that kids can display on their web pages:

Cyberbullying was also the topic of a CTAP workshop for educators and administrators in a 7-county area on Friday, March 16th. Guest speaker, Nancy Willard of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use helped educate attendees on the roles and responsibilities of teachers and administrators amidst this rapidly escalating problem.

I'll be posting more about that later this week!

This was the second in a series of CTAP educator events on Cybersafety topics. Earlier this year, Anne Collier and Larry Magid spoke to classroom teachers, administrators and school law enforcement partners about My Space and their recently published book, My Space Unraveled (a must-read for educators and parents alike!) A CTAP team also spoke at the Governor's Cybersafety Summit. In addition, CTAP has distributed more than 6,000 Cybersafety Awareness posters to schools within the the 100+ districts of Region IV.

For more information on the CTAP Region IV Cybersafety project, visit our web site.

PBWiki Videos for Educators

2007-03-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

"What's a wiki?" Isn't that the question you hear most often from teachers?

A new set of video interviews with Educators may help you provide the answer.

At CTAP, we love wikis and, in particular, we love PB Wiki. We have so many wikis that we actually had to create a wiki to keep track of all of our wikis! These one-trick ponies are so easy to create that they have been used extensively within our agency and we keep coming up with new uses every day:

to post agendas
to record notes at sub-committee meetings. (This works particularly well for us because we frequently video-conference meetings to avoid travel. One person is the scribe and a page refresh lets everyone - both near and far - immediately see what has been captured).
to serve as a syllabus for workshops
for public sharing of content created by teachers at Podcasting and Wiki workshops
to act as tutorials for topics like United Streaming
for conference sharing on sessions we attended at CUE
for summaries of program area activities prior to staff meeting
to start a dialogue for topics that will come up for discussion at meetings
for District Technology Planning - (to keep all information about a district in one easily accessed place and to let committee members share and add content.)
to reflect on our work in specific areas.
to plan an upcoming staff retreat
for professional learning community activities

Living in the Bay Area, we are close to the offices of PB Wiki. Ramit Sethi, co-founder of PB Wiki, admits that the company did not intentionally set out to create a tool for educators but quickly discovered that educators were major users of the service. Noting our activity at CTAP, Ramit was anxious to learn how they could support education. In December, he paid us a visit. And more recently, the company created these videos for educators to use in trainings. Some of my CTAP colleagues are among those speaking on the video about their experiences using PB wiki.

You can find this series of 6 videos on You Tube, starting with PB WIKI - What's a Wiki. They are also listed at the PB Wiki Educator's site.

For those of you who are wondering, "How do you find good models of wiki usage on PB Wiki?" ... rest assured that search capabilities are being added in the near future. The folks at PB Wiki want to make discoverability a key feature so educators can find other teachers who are teaching similar topics. Like you, we look forward to that capability.

In the interim, please feel free to share your ideas and experiences about PB Wiki.

Periodic Table Edutainment

2007-03-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

In December 2006, Theodore Gray, [Popular Science columnist and co-founder of Wolfram Research (Mathematica)] dazzled the world with his stunning periodic table, which was released as a tear-out section of the magazine. Four years in the making, the beautiful photography resulted from a search for samples of the elements that would reflect the diversity of nature.

Initially, Gray had hoped to collect and store each of the elements as sealed samples in a "table" that people could sit on and explore. But some of the elements are still unavailable in safe form. Ironically, Gray came full circle in releasing the poster version of his effort.

Now, the periodic table is available as an interactive flash version, as well. Clicking on an image brings it full-screen, encouraging users to explore new details.

You may also want to check out Tom Leher's entertaining and animated version of the periodic table in song, as another fun way to learn.

Swivel: Data meets Web 2.0

2007-03-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

Some of you may already be familiar with the CTAP Middle School Math Project, which matches web resources with the chapters in the 6th, 7th and 8th grade state adopted texts and the California Content Standards. These resources become available to teachers precisely when they need them and offer alternative methods of teaching and learning through videos, online tutorials, manipulatives and games.

In the differentiated instruction portion of this site, we cover spreadsheets and graphs, including all of the usual favorites - Create A Graph, Google Spreadsheets and Zoho Sheets. Today, I have a new favorite, Swivel.

What would happen if you were to add a social networking element to graphing? Data junkies unite -- Swivel does just that!

Here, individuals can explore and compare datasets, graphs and charts on every topic in the universe, from baseball scores to wine consumption. There are even charts quantifying the size of the Greek Army at the Battle of Thermopylae.

Best of all, Swivel is dynamic. Upload your own data or create subsets from other user data. You can also offer interpretations of data, using the comments feature. Change the view from line graph to pie chart etc. or dress up your graph with a photo background using a feature that the site hosts call "bling." Never before has the urge to number crunch been so much fun. Imagine the possibilities for your students!
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Lit To Go - Differentiated Instruction Tool

2007-03-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

Our community/court schools and our schools with high populations of ELL students are always looking for new tools to help differentiate instruction.

Here's a great one from the Florida Educational Technology Clearinghouse - Lit To Go

[Thanks, Ken Pruitt]

Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 format (and .pdf). There are thousands of stories and while many are suitable for younger kids, even lengthier ones from Jane Austen and Nathanial Hawthorne are covered. And best of all, you can sort by reading level.

Google Lit Trips/The Connected Community

2007-03-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

I attended the CUE conference in Palm Springs, last week. A serendipitous discovery that CUE presenter, Will Richardson of Weblogged-Ed and my long-time friend, Warren Buckleitner, (Editor of Children's Technology Revue) were living in the same town of Flemington, NJ (population: 4,200) led to a late-night conversation with Warren, who informed me that they work in the same building. What are the odds that these two guys would rock the same town!

In connecting with Warren and catching up on what was happening on both sides of the coast, I cited local educator, Jerome Burg's site, GoogleLitTrips.com as an example of how Web 2.0 tools are changing how students learn. Warren forwarded the resource to Will; Will posted it on his web blog. Mere hours later, other bloggers and blogger aggregators picked it up. Within days, Google Lit Trips went around the world. You've got to love the power of a connected community!

If you want a think-outside-the-box experience, spend some time with the Grapes of Wrath kml file at GOOGLE LIT TRIPS. Jerome has cleverly added a podcast introduction and a photo slide show that illustrates how features of Google Earth have been extended to provide unique learning experiences. Google Earth 3-D terrains are matched with real photos. Period pictures and video links within the pop-up windows embellish the journey. Pop-up windows also take on probing roles, challenging students to go deeper in their thought processes to discover why the Joad Family journey to the promised land is very much a story of America that exists today.

Student Showcase: Best Practices in Ed Tech

2007-03-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

Finding good examples of best practices in educational technology is not always easy. But the California Department of Education is out to improve the situation with a state-wide technology showcase for curriculum-based student technology projects. Check out the student gallery here. Each selection includes learning objectives and teacher reflection.

For those who are looking for ways to use podcasting in education, why not try VocabuCasting? Teacher, Randy Kolset, from De Portola Elementary describes his experience at the CDE Showcase site. Follow the trail to the classroom web site and you'll see how students are using vocabu-casting across the curriculum in science, language arts, social studies and math.

If you want to experience podcasting on a global level, check out the work of Carol Anne McGuire's students in Anaheim, CA through Rock Our World. Now in its fifth year, the current Rock-n-Sol collaboration involves NASA educators and students from 15 countries who share lessons and cultural knowledge about the sun. Musical composition is an annual component of the project. It is done as a collaborative process using Garage Band. Teams each create a 30-second sound track, then pass it on to students in the next country. Each team of students adds their own 30-second track until the music has come a complete circle. Then, new instruments are added and the process is repeated. The final symphony represents collaboration from every continent.

Update to Michael Wesch's Web 2.0 video

2007-02-12T20:53:00.000-08:00

Update to Michael Wesch's Web 2.0 video:

Sub-titles from China have been added.
947,859 page views since Feb 1.

To keep up with the latest, check out "Savage Minds: Mike Wesch Rocks the Video Essay," where MW appears to post regularly. You can find out how he made the video here and read up on some of his perspectives as he watches this all play out.

Just imagine being in his classes right now - such fertile discussions must ensue! Not only did he produce a compelling product, he just brought cultural anthropology to the forefront of international attention.

Meanwhile, educators from around the world are also taking note. Here's one teacher's blog from Argentina that has prompted a discussion of the implications of Dr. Wesch's work for teaching and learning.

And I love this interpretation of Dr. Wesch's work from a blogger at global-culture.org:

The Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University studies the impacts of digital technology on human interaction. The ethnographer’s job is to immerse himself in the culture being studied and participate in order to get a better understanding of their ways of life. By this definition Prof. Wesch has accomplished a rather unique milestone by summarizing the insights of his work in the digital arena into the short video Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, which digests this relatively new concept in a way that makes it accessible to those that are not part of the elite (l33t) group at the forefront of the web evolution.

The video, which in less than 2 weeks has been watched almost one million times, owes its sudden popularity perhaps to the fact that not only does it provide an engaging explanation, but it turns the message inside out, inviting the viewer to become part of the very same culture being studied. By the end of the presentation almost any viewer realizes it has also being a user (part of the machine) at some point. In my opinion this is the most important accomplishment of this group: create a gateway into a culture to the point that any person is capable of participating.

Web 2.0 meets Video 2.0

2007-02-11T10:16:00.000-08:00

My colleague, Kathleen, has been teaching Web 2.0 workshops for educators this month throughout our region and I've had the good fortune to be in on the planning. Cultural Anthropologist, Michael Wesch's video (Web 2.0...Machine is Us/ing Us) on Web 2.0 was shown at our sessions.

Earlier this week, I stumbled onto a note from Dr. Wesch that he had relocated his video from YouTube to Mojiti, in a social experiment that he calls Video 2.0. Now, anyone could provide commentary for the video! Beyond the oohs and awws, viewers immediately contributed helpful annotations and revisions of supporting facts. Some added ideas for how to make it better.

It was Web 2.0 being used to comment on web.20 - Wow!

By then, it was so compelling that I couldn't resist returning repeatedly to see where it would go next. By the next morning, multiple interpretations of the video had appeared. Users were creating their own unique viewing experiences with "spot sets."

First there were Spanish subtitles and then, Italian subtitles. And the French even have their own running commentary. Then, someone in Denmark came up with the idea of providing a complete transcript of Dr. Wesch's video for the benefit of those who can't catch it all at first glance. And next thing you know, a team was in Google Docs, making it happen.

I have been on such a high, following the developments and contributions of a world wide brain!