Thursday, January 31, 2008

Web 2.0 in Plain English

I indulged in a brief mental break tonight from staring at accreditation documents to find a few resources for sharing at Andy's Teaching and Learning discussions this week. A while back, I found this site link on the Bamboo Project blog, and thought it was fun. The Common Craft folks have created short little videos that demystify all kinds of techie-stuff. It's worth cruising the site. Corey reminded me about this site yesterday when he told me that he used the "Blogs in Plain English" at a meeting with the Redmond Fire Department and they really enjoyed it. He is helping the fire department explore ways in which Web 2.0 technologies can be used in fire prevention education and improving communications between fire fighters in the field. Interesting stuff! A reminder that the importance of these tools for education goes way beyond academia!

What I like about these little videos is that they are very elegantly done, and there is clearly some thought about pedagogy put into them. As they say on their site, "Our product is explanation." (Hmm, that would be a nice mission statement for some teachers as well...) Their 3 to 4 minute "Paperworks Videos" introduce the viewer to concepts by using familiar metaphors. The images they use are non-intimidating things like post-it notes, whiteboards, stick figures and notepads. They are brief, providing snippets that our brains can grasp, without overwhelming them with information. Although these may look simple, it's clear that a lot of work must go into creating each video. For ambitious teachers who want to create their own content, these are great examples. For the rest of us, we can leave the "explanation" to other experts, and just link to the wonderful content that is out there to use!

Here are links to my favorites:
Enough fun. Now back to the accreditation report!

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