YouTube – Page 3 – Clif Mims

Teachers’ Online Identities

Miguel Guhlin has once again pushed my thinking. This time its about the issue of personal content that K-12 teachers post online. I’ve spent a lot of time researching, thinking about and discussing this topic, but it struck me that this issue is actually a lot hairier than I’ve previously realized. There are a lot of different aspects that need to be considered.

Here are a few points from Miguel’s post. I encourage you to consider each question twice asking yourself Do.. the first time and Should… the second time.

Do/Should school districts have any say about what a teacher does after hours?
Do/Should school districts have any say about what a teacher posts online?
Do/Should teachers represent the district after hours?

Rather than commenting on the discussion at this point, I hope to further it by asking a few more questions.

Do/Should schools districts have any say about what staff members (Secretary, custodian, cafeteria staff, bus driver, mechanic, maintenance, etc.) do after hours? Post online?
Do/Should parents and the community have any say in these matters?
How does this translate to higher education?
If the answers to these questions are “yes” then is the same true for individuals in other professions (Nurse, news reporter, radio DJ, police officer, elected official, unelected government employee, or store clerk)?

Learn with Us (IDT7078)

As I mentioned in a recent blog post I’m teaching a seminar this summer focusing on Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 Technologies. I concluded the earlier post by sharing the following:

In keeping with the principles of Web 2.0 I encourage the participation of everyone with an interest or expertise in this topic. You may contribute to the discussion and fun by using the following tag/keyword: idt7078. Be on the lookout for ways (Ustream, Skype, Twitter, Plurk, etc.) to informally participate with us. I would certainly consider making it possible for those wishing to enroll in the course and participate from a distance, too.

Greg R. Fishbone replied to my earlier post and asked the following question regarding my concluding statements.

I’d love to participate informally, but how does one follow a keyword?

I think this is a GREAT a question and I suspect Greg is not the only one wondering about this. I’m sharing this information here in hopes of helping Greg and anyone else that may be interested in being part of our learning community this summer.

Google Keyword Search
You can add the following RSS feed to your aggregator (such as Google Reader or Bloglines). New blog posts, wiki entries, bookmarks, videos, podcasts, etc. tagged with idt7078 will then be “delivered” to you as they show up in Google.

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=idt7078&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss

An alternative to this strategy would be to setup a Google Alert for idt7078.

Twitter Search
You can also add a keyword search for idt7078 to TweetDeck or similar Twitter platform if you are using one. If not, then you can add the following RSS feed for the Twitter Search of the course tag to your aggregator.

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=idt7078

Plurk Search
Add idt7078 to your list of Saved Searches in your profile’s dashboard.

Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0

I’m teaching a special topics seminar this summer for graduate students (3 hours graduate credit). The topic will be Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 Technologies. While we’ll consider common trends and issues and survey many of the popular tools and services related to Web 2.0, the heart of the course will be learning to effectively integrate Web 2.0 technologies and principles with teaching and learning. The focus will be on K-12 education but accommodations can be made for individuals from other fields (health, corporate, military, higher education, etc.).

I’m very excited about this class. I taught the course in Summer 2008 and we learned a lot and had a blast! You can view the ebook (authored by the graduate students) and other course materials that emerged from the 2008 Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 class to get an idea of what this class will be like.

In keeping with the principles of Web 2.0 I encourage the participation of everyone with an interest or expertise in this topic. You may contribute to the discussion and fun by using the following tag/keyword: idt7078. Be on the lookout for ways (Ustream, Skype, Twitter, Plurk, etc.) to informally participate with us. I would certainly consider making it possible for those wishing to enroll in the course and participate from a distance, too.

Your Class Can Interact with Astronauts

NASA astronaut Mark Polansky, who will be commanding the next mission to the International Space Station, has just posted a video to NASA’s official YouTube channel inviting YouTubers and Twitter fans to take part in his next mission, submitting video questions via YouTube and following mission updates over Twitter.

To ask a question, Polansky says to create a video of around thirty seconds and post it to YouTube, then send it to his Twitter account using an @reply. He’ll respond to the questions on NASA TV, which is broadcast nation-wide. (Source)

I encourage you and your students to participate in this activity. It’s a rare opportunity. Who knows? You may have a future NASA astronaut, controller or engineer sitting in your class!