Tag Archives: Teaching

Day Seventy Seven of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

Socrates Louvre

I’m such a fan of fun new ways to learn things; and videos can be a great way of learning. Open Culture has a bunch of videos helping to introduce you, or your patrons, to twenty five different philosophers!

“Philosophy as an academic subject is regularly maligned in popular discourse. Philosophy majors get told that their studies are useless. Philosophy professors find their budgets cut, their courses scrutinized, and their character grossly impeached in propagandistic religious feature films. It’s enough to make one despair over the turgid air of anti-intellectualism that stifles conversation.

But before we start pining for bygone golden ages of rigorous critical thought, let us remember that philosophers have been a thorn in the side of the powerful since the inception of Western philosophy. After all, Socrates, the ancient Greek whose name we associate with philosophy’s most basic maxims and methods, was supposedly put to death for the crime of which today’s professorate so often stand accused: corrupting the youth….

There are 25 videos in total, which let you become acquainted with, and perhaps corrupted by, a range of thinkers who question orthodoxy and common sense, including Aristotle, Epicurus, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Arthur Schopenhauer, Albert Camus, Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Baruch Spinoza.”

Six tools for creating videos on Chromebooks

Flaming LightbulbHas your school made a switch to using Chromebooks? Wondering how to get the most out of the video features? This article features six video tools that work well with Chromebooks.

WeVideo is the most recommended tool of the six. It has the most features available, including templates for new users to follow, the ability to upload your own media clips, and an app that allows you to save your video projects in Google Drive. It even has apps for Android and iPhone so students can use their own images and videos in their projects.

Interested in using animation in your videos? Try Wideo or Powtoon. They also include user-friendly templates, slideshows, and the ability to add your own narration.

Finally, the article also includes two helpful how-to videos, one about Stupeflix (where you aren’t required to create an account!) and the other showing audio slideshow creation on YouTube.

If you are looking for classroom video tips in general, check out our earlier post here.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/q2demy8, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Academics: Heard of the Open Syllabus Project?

So, what do you get when you gather one million college course syllabuses off of university websites, extract some of their key components (metadata), dump it all into a big database, and add a powerful search engine named Syllabus Explorer? You get the Open Syllabus Project!

According to the New York Times….”The hope and expectation is that this tool will enable people to learn new things about teaching, publishing and intellectual history. We think that the Syllabus Explorer demonstrates how more open strategies can support teaching, diversify evaluation practices and offer new perspectives on publishing, scholarship and intellectual traditions.”

Without a doubt, this Project is controversial, but I will let you read the full article to weigh in on the issues. Read more now….

Using Twitter in the Classroom

Many schools are exploring the use of Twitter in the classroom for engagement and instruction. Recently Forbes suggested that Twitter is no longer optional but required for schools. But how to best use Twitter in the classroom? David Sornberger’s infographic to the rescue! It lists 20 possible ideas on how to use Twitter in the schools:

What do you think of these ideas?  Do you use Twitter in your school?

How Much Technology? Striking the Right Balance

Image by Mosi. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons' licensing.
Image by Mosi. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons’ licensing.

Many schools are laying plans now for some sort of staff development activities over the summer, many dealing with tech integration. School media specialists can play an important role in helping teachers understand how technology can enrich their subject expertise, and help plan and provide learning activities that engage students. The linked article discusses the right balance between teaching and tech integration, and also shares three (not 30) valued, multifaceted tech tools. Edutopia provides the details and finer points at Finding the Right Balance with Technology in the Classroom