It has been a busy half term so far, I’ve made 3 new websites. One is a blog for my local pyramid of schools (www.swanmorepyramid.co.uk) where we will be sharing ideas and tips across the schools. It will also be a way of getting the non-blogging schools to start without them setting one up themselves. The 2nd website isn’t quite ready yet (blog about it tomorrow) and the third is a video site.
Now, there are video sites available already including the excellent www.ictvideohelp.co.uk made by my friend Phil Bagge (@baggiepr) but I wanted something different. I have linked to the sites that I know about, but please let me know if I am missing yours. Due to my location in Portsmouth, I find it difficult to travel to a lot of Teachmeets as they are so far away but I often volunteer, or am asked, to make a video presentation on how to use X Y or Z in the classroom. I was sharing these videos on my blog here, but I wondered if there was a better way and of course there was. So I made a new site in WordPress and asked some friends to make me some videos too. One is live already and a few more are on their way…
The videos will show how to use something in under ten minutes. This is just enough time to squeeze in at the end of a staff meeting, even tired teachers have ten minutes of concentration left in them at 4:45pm. The videos will try and cover either beginner’s use of a tool or advanced use of a tool. Maybe we could extend and do a 5min video on using blogging in maths or something, but that will come later. Videos are uploaded to any video site and embedded in the post which allows comments to be shared too.
Anyone can post a video and it can be done using screen capture software like Jing or Camtasia or just a webcam or digital camera as you present your idea. These are then uploaded and tagged for others to find. To upload either send me the Vimeo/Viddler/Youtube link or email me and I’ll give you a login for the website itself. I want this site to belong to everyone and I don’t want to be the only one sharing videos (in fact, the less management of it I do, the better!)
So, hopefully it will be useful to you, if you have any questions, comments or ideas then you know where I am.
I hope you like it:-) www.undertenminutes.com
Edit: There is a Twitter account too @undertenminutes
I recently attended a workshop in Denver, Colorado, where the tech folks from a school district were doing this for their PD. Wonderful idea to post short videos! We don’t usually have time to observe each other and afterschool training has proven ineffective. Digital PLCs seem to be the answer. Their suggestion was not only showing the videos at a staff meeting, but asking people to view them beforehand on their own time so they would come with questions. Wonderful! Thanks for sharing!
A great resource Ian- I am sure I will be pointing people to this in future. The site looks great too. Thanks!