In the article I discussed in last week's post, the author says that TeacherTube.com is a great Web 2.0 resource for teachers. This evening I thought I'd take a look around the TeacherTube site and give my impressions. Well, I was underwhelmed. My focus was mainly on the videos and each one I checked out was boring and fairly uninformative. In one video that I looked at, the objectives were not written correctly, the speaker read directly word-for-word from the PowerPoint slide and the pace was really slow. The irony was that the facilitator was talking about her 5th grade students - Next Geners - and how they are self-directed learners who enjoyed multi-tasking, high tech collaboration, and a quick pace. Another video that caught my attention (given my topic of Web 2.0) was one entitled Web 2.0 Workshop and listed in category of professional development. I've provided a link and I'd ask you to take a look but that would waste your time.
I have been fairly impressed and at times, even mesmerized by the various Web 2.0 resources and learning materials out there, but the resources posted on TeacherTube just didn't seem that robust or high-tech. However, I am not a K-12 teacher and perhaps many of the resources are geared toward the lower grades. I'm curious what others may think about the TeacherTube site and the resources posted there - please feel free to share your thoughts.
www.teachertube.com
I will say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder in reference to TeacherTube. I found that the Blogs in Plain English video provided by Commoncraft would have been a nice introduction to them that could be used by this course. I also liked Got Math? as a way to help students see why they should spend time learning about math. The resource section linked to TeacherVision where lesson plans and other ideas can be searched by grade level and topic. I would say that there is a lot of value to some of the stuff that TeacherTube contains. It may not be the best site out there but it provides a lot of the pieces that Web 2.0 value, including various ways to access content (video, audio, pictures, documents, blogs, communities, and links to outside sources.
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