Journal 3

Video in the Age of Participation
By Glenn Bull

Videos have been a useful tool for teachers, used at classroom for a better understanding of knowledge. The advances in technology, such as digital videos facilitate this task. Through digital videos teachers can select specific parts of the video to the class. There are a lot of information available on videos in Internet. Organizations such as PBS with NOVA and National Geographic with Pete's bond have online educational sites in videos available to public. It is decision of the teachers to use the videos that are appropriate to the standards grade level. Annenberg Media (http://www.learner.org) and PBS provide a lot of educational resources such as lesson plans, teacher guides, and a lot of video clips.
Organizations such as Discovery Educator's Network (DEN) allow teachers to collaborate with the design of content of video clips. Teachers can edit or remix the information. All the member of DEN are allowed to use this videos. Programs such as Next Vista (http://www.NextVista.org) foment the use of technology through the free use of this program that offers an online library and short videos. Wiki spaces also are a free online space for teachers, this space allows teachers to share and get information at different grade levels.

How do I plan to use videos at the classroom?
I want to start right now, checking different free spaces available for teacher’s lesson plans. I can use all the information from my edu422 class and start working at grade K-2.

How digital videos are improving education versus the use of projectors and VCRs?
Digital videos are easier to classify in clips; there are a great variety of short video clips that complement class lessons. Projectors are good to show images, but are restricted only to the images available to show and VCRs are difficult to find a specific part of the video. The best choose are online video clips. It is easy to work with them and there are a lot of free spaces to choose for teachers.