The Joys of You Tube in the Classroom

For Issue 2 my group decided to have students create a news broadcast; the kicker is that it is the past. Students in groups of three choose an era in history that was covered this school year, and then, they produce a news broadcast concerning that era. The format of a nightly-news broadcast could be a fun way to get students excited about learning about a period in history.

In addition, the news broadcast is an excellent format for:

• reviewing content taught;
• creating a culminating activity to a unit of study; and
• building the "core teaching" unit for any period in history.

The project might be approached in any number of ways. For example, small groups of students might work together to create a nightly-news broadcast for an "average" day during the Civil War or some other period in history. The broadcast will include both hard news and feature reports that present facts and interesting information about the period. All groups might work to create a news broadcasts from the same historic period, or each group might work on a broadcast from a different period such as the Revolutionary War, the Roaring Twenties or the Vietnam War.

With the creation of this lesson plan, I started to research some completed historical videos on You Tube. I also found a video site for teachers, called Teacher Tube. However, the streaming server is a little slow and the videos aren't as smooth to watch.

Below is a simple, but powerful, video about the May 4th Shooting at KSU during the Vietnam War. What a great way for students to learn about our history while creating an educational video for thousands of others to view. This assignment is a great example of cross-discipline collaboration - history and technology.

Constructivism in the Classroom

What kind of teacher are you in the classroom? Is your way of teaching student-centered or teacher-centered? Do you lecture or opt for group collaboration on solving an issue? As we begin to explore different learning theories (cognitive, behaviorist and constructivism approaches to learning) in this course, it makes you reflect on your ideas of how students learn best.

Since I only teach adults in higher education (18 years and up) I have students in the classroom with a foundation of prior knowledge. These students can read, write and understand basic math concepts (or so I hope :-) I find that with non-traditional students (ages 24+) they learn best using the constructivism approach to learning. They bring to the table many life experiences and enjoy group collaboration. I encourage group discussion/projects because it allows students to use problem-solving skills. In the class I am currently teaching, the answers to the questions posed don't always have right or wrong answers, therefore this approach to learning works very well in the classroom.

After conducting a little research on the web, I found that Jean Piaget, a Swiss philosopher born in the late 1800s, helped to shape (some say pioneer) the constructivism approach. He is pictured above.

Piaget's photo was taken from: http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/2000/scheepers_md/projects/loo/theory/construct.html