The First Educational Video

I've been in New York a little more than two days (at the time of writing), and am having such a good time! Meeting the Half Hollow Hills group Thursday was great - I was impressed with the discussion and enjoyed getting the chance to take part. East Enders, I'm sorry I couldn't visit your group, too. That said, so many of you EE folks came to the Marratech session Monday, that I felt I was able to get to know you, as well.

Yesterday, I worked with about 300 of the teachers in the Bureau of Nonpublic Schools, who provide Title 1 support to students at private schools in the city. I'd been warned that this was a crowd that would eat a speaker alive, so I'm glad to be able to wake up, stretch, and post to a blog. Seriously, they were a totally fun crowd, with years and years of experience (and some technophobia), as well as plenty of interesting experiences to share.

Speaking of interesting, this week, you are to post some notes on your own blog about the tools/resources/people/divine intervention you will need for the first of your two educational videos. You do not need to reply on my blog regarding that, but by 10p the night before your next class, you should post a reply to this message with a link to your blog post with the first draft of the video. If you haven't already done so, make sure to review the rules (http://nextvista.org/resources/NV_Contributing_Material.pdf), and (as with any tech project,) save your work regularly! We specifiy how you should name the video (see the wiki at http://summer1video.wikispaces.com/Class+Schedule), so please note that as well.

Also remember that the audience for this video is students (youngsters, not you). What can you do to help them better understand something? Are there things multimedia allows you to do that aren't possible in a normal classroom? I'd also encourage you to keep a file with the transcript of your video - posting that with the video (or as part of the video) could make your insights available to a set of kids who otherwise can get left behind in the world of film.

Do the video as early as you can to give others as much time as possible to look at your work and make suggestions for the revision. What you do on the video next week will largely be a function of the feedback you get, so make sure to draw eyeballs to your blog and video.