Vlogging: The end is a new beginning

It’s time to say goodbye to vlogging, a very interesting form to show one’s life, and has great potential implications to education. After these weeks searching information of vlogging, I found that vlogging is a really popular and effective way to teach. Some teachers have their own video blog to hold some on line activity and discussion, which attracts students’ attention better then texts and pictures. And I found that video blog is successful in teaching languages, because the learners receive audio, visual and sometimes text information at the same time which help them understand and remember the language in different ways. The importance is that the learners don’t feel boring when they watch the videos rather than texts. Here is a very good vlogging that can give an exact representation of teaching English via video blog. http://hugosite.com/

I promised to learn how to make videos and vlogging at the beginning of holding this topic, but I haven’t successfully created a good one that I feel satisfied to share. Although it’s the end of this topic, it’s a new beginning for me to make endeavor improving my skills of creating good videos. And it’s a pretty good idea to take advantage of videos as an instructional instrument in my study and future career.

In this week’s discussion, we are talking about the Assistive Technology. In fact, after searching the information of AT, I found that Vlogging can also be a kind of AT to help individuals who have disability of deaf. Here is a video blog I found on line for deaf conference. http://2009iadconf.blogspot.com/

University Video Showcase

With the development of the technology and the society, videos become increasingly popular on the internet as a media tool to broadcast news and events instead of texts and audios. People are more attracted and willingly to get information from lively videos.

A great number of universities all over the world provide video showcase on their websites which include university introduction videos, student videos, latest news and lectures, etc. It is a fantastic way allowing people from different places of the world to know about the universities and life there as well. Many top class universities in the world, such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale University, etc. provide videos of lectures and public courses that we can watch and download for free. Students from other universities have a good opportunity to share these information and knowledge without having to take courses in these schools. And click here you can see a website including collections of the video websites from different universities.

Also, here is the Syracuse University Video Showcase website http://video.syr.edu/default.aspx. You can conveniently find enormous interesting videos about Syracuse University. And it’s a very good way for new students and the students who would like to apply for SU to know the university and the culture here. If you are interested in the courses of other program, it’s also easy to search relative lectures there.

So let's enjoy these videos and those free recourses they provide.

Educational Videoblogging

The main areas that educators should focus on when incorporating Vlogging into curriculum is the length of the videos in the videoblog, students’ access to the videoblogs, the students’ differentiated learning styles, the privacy and protection of their students, and the incorporation of diverse perspectives into the content of the videos. (Rebecca Meeder Educational Technology University of Hawai’i at Manoa, 2008)

Firstly, the teachers ask their students to view a video online that they have created usually around five minutes or less. Then they need to make sure that it is available for students to access to in their home and school. Also, Vlogging is an additional way for textual and visual learners to learn. Textual learners can make comments in videoblogs to discuss and comment or critique the video presented on the videoblog. Visual learners have opportunity to get more information in another way besides in-class lecture or textbook.

This week I found a very interesting video blogging website that is for educational use:

Bre Pettis is a former elementary school teacher in Seattle who used videoblogs to create projects with his students as well as share with their parents the different activities they were participating in at school. His videoblog at http://room132.com/ often features videos of himself explaining to the students’ parents about the topics and themes of the current week’s activities. This videoblog provides another way for students to get together to share not only their thoughts but their videos as well. It’s a very interesting and attractive way to stimulus students’ curiosity and participation. I’m enjoy traveling around this vlog and watching these videos very much.

This video tells me …

Video blog is a very lively way to telling stories that can be utilized in education to influence others thoughts, even change one’s philosophy. The more knowledge and experience we have the more incisive we can understand life. How can we gain these knowledge and experience from education? Now videos can become an impressive and valid way to do it.

What is my life for? What is my year- after-year hard studying for? Every time when I feel depressed, frustrated or distressed, I always ask these questions to myself. I believe education should not only educate people to gain knowledge and skills, but guide us to find our purpose of life as well.

Everyone is purchasing a somewhat perfect condition when doing anything, requiring oneself to be perfect and others to be perfect. However, people often feel lost at last, and has a kind of inferiority for a long time because of one’s fair looking(tall or short, big eyes or small eyes), however any reasons, even a teacher’s words. Last week, I saw a video on the net that moved me and inspired me a lot. This man shows an extremely contrast between his strong soul and his appearance to us. I share this very short 4 minutes video here and expect your changing after watching it.

"From having nothing to having everyting, a life moves the whole world" (translation)