Adding Video to Your Blog

There's people out there that do this very successfully, certainly a lot better than I do. One of the reasons that I have so much profession respect for Jarrod Lamshed, Will Chamberlain and Joe McClung is there all teachers with blogs that promote the use of video for sharing. Nothing comes close to being able to get a 'feel' for a classroom than being able to view it.

Not so long ago I was asked by another teacher how to create a video for a blog. Now this in itself isn't a major, although I would say that I've taken it for granted somewhat. What really surprised me is that the IT person said that he'd have to tutor him about it for a week or so and didn't have the time. That led to me thinking that I really should explain how I do it as to me its straightforward, and ask Jarrod, Will and Joe to explain how they all go about it.

For my educational site I try and post once a day. Although that's a little difficult at times once you have the students 'humming' its relatively straight forward and video is a huge part of it. I take the opportunity to video as many school events as possible, or things from an educational perspective that I think the (online) audience would find interesting. Its that old cliche but some of the most viewed material that I've produced has been complete accidents. Our most popular language series in 2008 'Learn to Speak Samoan' came about as an accident because I had a charged camera, some free time and a student who didn't speak English. Our Girls Rugby videos which became firm favourites were a result of having footage that we were using for training and drills turned over to a wider audience.

I use a standard video camera without additional microphone (currently its a Canon MV800i) and a tripod. I then use a firewire capable to port the material across to movie maker. I use Photostory to create a five second link to the blog for before and at the end for the credits. I keep the videos no longer than three minutes. When publishing for uploading to blogger I generally don't upload anything bigger than 30 megs. I believe that the limit for files is 55 meg.

That's it.

I probably should have an individual sound mic, I know that I should use a program a bit more advanced that movie maker. I have used Moviemaker simply because I'm comfortable with it and its straightforward. I know there's better programs out there, but its always been adequate. Now that in New Zealand were into Term Two I have spent last term training a team of students to do all the filming and the editing. This term I look forward to viewing the finished product online and (hopeful) approving it for publication.

What I would encourage to anyone whose running a blog to think about publishing video footage, students really respond well to it (so much more so than written text or static photographs I believe) and it gives your auidence a greater understanding of others. Now there's also the whole idea of broadcasting/streaming live from your classroom, and I lookforward to reading from our experts on how that's done as that's something that's probably straightforward but I know nothing about the logistics of.

Why I Intergrate Online Work into Class

As of last year, I'd been teaching for 12 years. I was teaching at very 'inner city' schools, in New Zealand we have a decile ranking system for each school based on parents income. We were a '1' which was the lowest. My classrooms for the last four years had a single (i.e. one) European student. I had the 'worst' classrooms, with the 'worst' Boys, in not the "worst" school but one with a 'not-very good reputation'.

I'd always been heavily involved in sport as I thought that was the best way that I could motivate the students. When I say heavily I was putting my hand up for coaching responsibilities that others wouldn't necessarily take on. To cut a long story short I was taking the reigns for somewhere in the region of 25 teams a year, in ten different sports. I didn't really have a bigger idea than that, but I felt to motivate the students its what worked best.

Last year for the first time I got involved in online work and I fell into blogging. Started March 12, by June I was posting pretty much every day. I realised pretty soon what a wonderful tool it was, or the potential that it had. My students 'got it' very early on in the piece. The students were Pacific Islands students (predominantly Tongan and Samoan) and Maori. Their culture was so important to them that sharing it with others, in many forms, had a huge affect on the moral and effort of the class.

We didn't have the greatest resources at my school. We had a (singular) classroom computer and there was only three video cameras in the whole school. Two of those were broken most of the year. There was only one digital camera, but we worked around that.

What motivated the students so much, was their engagement. Getting a response from around the world was just so empowering for the students. I had no idea what I was doing in the beginning and we had days when no-one visited our class page! Things started slowly but that was great because everyone, me included, fed off the momentum. Inadvertently we discovered that there's not a lot of videos out there about speaking Tongan or Samoan language and the students felt pleased to be sharing their culture with the world. Once we started moving up the google search engine ratings success fed off success, there's a lot of displaced Pacific Island people out there wanting to connect with their culture.

We networked with other schools around the world. These experiences for the students were so powerful that I can't put them into words properly. For those of you who didn't catch it Mr C and his class from Noel Elementary School in Missouri, USA helped with a Samoan Sasa or Slap Dance. The link's here.

I know I changed, as a teacher as a result. I went from someone who was professionally going through the motions to someone who wanted to really be involved in innovative teaching. The sport went out the window to some extent as I tried to make do of the digital world. I'm so passionate about it all that it was a major factor in my changing of jobs after 12 years teaching in the area. I live in another city now, at a similar type of school, when I applied for the job I wasn't going to say 'yes' to a school that wouldn't allow me to work with the students in an online capacity. That's been gradual steps but again thanks to some of the people that we've made connections with we've taught other classes in other countries (Mr Lamshed's Boys Class in Adelaide), we've had other New Zealand classes teach us... (Appleby School in Nelson, NZ) and not a day goes by where in class we don't use the blog or online work in a meaning and powerful way.

I'm very grateful for the contacts that I've made and the lessons that I've learned through being active online and I know the students have benefited. That's why I'm so passionate about what I do and the opportunities that online work provides for students. I know that online work and blogging is not a cure all for difficult classrooms but I am truly convinced that it is an indispensable tool that I couldn't do without, and something that has so much to offer to students and teachers a like