This week, the third grade team decided to research Bats. Some of this research was done in the Rancho lab. We especially enjoyed viewing Batworld, Bats4kids, Megabats, and Vampire Bats.
One thing about the UC Berkeley lectures on YouTube is that we all have been inspired by great teachers at different times (though generally few and far between). But the YouTube lectures give us a chance to see great speakers who love their subject area and have a wealth of engaging stories and examples that really help us learn. If K-12 teachers had time to listen to expert lectures on topics related to their curriculum, they could acquire new knowledge and stories that create the context that makes learning stick. Here's a lecture on gravity from the "Physics for Future Presidents" course taught by Richard Muller, in which he shows a model of how gravity acts on a stream of water. He then has us consider what would happen if the stream shot out so far that it missed the earth on it's way down. This is the kind of question that would be a great opener in a classroom or around the dinner table with the kids. Bottom line: If you look at the four and five star lectures, you're bound to pick up some great information.
The San Francisco Chronicle had an article last week :
Cal offers full courses on YouTube - but not for credit
Ellen Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, October 4, 2007
You don't have to be a UC Berkeley student to be educated like one.
UC Berkeley has begun to publish its lectures on YouTube, the first university to team up with the video-sharing site to offer full courses online. It's the latest move to bring higher education to the masses through the Web.
Other institutions have used YouTube to broadcast occasional classes, but UC Berkeley is the first to offer full courses online, school officials and YouTube said Wednesday....
Some 200 clips have been uploaded to YouTube so far, representing eight semesterlong courses, including Marian Diamond's human anatomy class and Richard A. Muller's Physics for Future Presidents.
I watched one physics course and kept visualizing Science Teachers in High School assigning these for extra credit, or teachers refreshing their own knowledge; but I also wondered how this would affect the bandwidth in a High School Campus, and the fact that most Schools currently block YouTube at School. Then Margo came by and said "It's great, but if you just sit and watch it without a way to ask questions or get background info, it's kind of boring. Is this the way we learn science?" I guess like anything you have to find the good stuff. For instance, here's a clip from a UCB Search Engines Technology & Business course. It's a lecture by Sergey Brin, founder of Google. This provides a great opportunity to hear the perspective of someone you probably wouldn't get to hear otherwise.
kerpoof is aiming to become a leading destination site for children through a suite of activities that are enriching as well as entertaining. On Kerpoof, kids can create art, stories, and animated movies using a simple 3D interface, and when done, can save it to their gallery, share it with others, and vote on their favorites.
Krista Marks, CEO for Kerpoof presenting. Aims to change the way kids interact with the computer. Most of what kids do today is mindless, a waste of time - Kerpoof wants to change this.
Goal: to be a site where fun is not separate from learning, but integral to it. Kids can create art through the site, write their own stories, create their own movies.
Parents are no longer buying software for their kids with the explosion of broadband - they are turning to websites for them. Neopets and Club Penguin are very popular, but are not as educational as they could be. At the same time, CS majors are plummeting. Bizworld saw this trend and came to Kerpoof to create software to educate children using the web.
Easy tool for kids to make their own picture scenes - cool effects when you add particular elements to the scene (add a moon and it becomes night, etc.). You can share your pictures with friends.
To make a movie, pick a scene then a backdrop. CEO claiming the movie creator teaches kids object oriented programming. You put objects in a scene and then make the objects do things (objects and methods). Looks like a basic Flash applet creator. Still, looks impressive. You can add music to the background. You can add multiple scenes to an entire movie.
If you want to add interactivity to a movie, you can have prompts at different points in the movie that change how the movie proceeds (makes it more like a game created by kids).
On Thursday, October 4th, we went sailing with the wonderful people from Call of the Sea. It was a evening cruise for educators in an attempt to spread the word about what a wonderful program they have for kids. We boarded the 82 foot Sloop Seaward at 5 and returned to the dock at 7. Here are some pictures we took:
I'm at Willow Creek Academy with "the best students in the world." They're telling me what to say as I show them how to make a blog for their 8th grade projects. They also want to add: "And Willow Creek is cool."
Their Social Studies teacher has an ibook with the camera in it, so as I showed them how easy it is to make a posting we turned on "photobooth" and they all leaned into the screen to take this picture.
