TeachersClips - the "big idea" is taking shape

What is TeachersClips? Well, this is the thing I have been working on for quite some time. Recently I've had the help of a team of students, and the dream of a database of popular culture clips that can be used in classrooms is starting to become a reality. Up until recently I affectionately referred to it as "my big idea" -which is kind of lame since I am not the one and only person to ever think it up, but now we have a name and second iteration which is almost ready to be released! (see the first iteration here). We have lots of work to do, but I am excited about how things are going.

Our team has gone out and asked for teacher feedback, and we have two great students who are working on the programming of the actual site. We have some pretty good design options in mind (see some shots below) and a few people have committed to beta testing this thing out for us. Last week we pitched the idea to some local experts and actually didn't get very positive comments. I was frustrated (and still am!) because lots of their written feedback appeared to be directly related to things I said. It is likely I wasn't extroverted and clear enough. That is why we need your feedback!

I am flabbergasted by how little I have been blogging about this experience. I will try and correct my ways and get the news out better.

So what if the home page became your profile or hub of clips once you have set up a profile? We have tossed around the idea of having the home page just be the browse page once you have created an account. We want to enable bookmarking so that if and when teachers see clips they want to use for a future unit they can easily bookmark it into separate folders for later use. 

This "Share" page will probably be a pop out form rather than an actual page on the site. Knowing how little time teachers have, we want to make it as easy and quick as possible to share media. Of course, the more info we get on each clip, the more cool stuff we can do with it later - so it is tough to find a balance.

Notice the big empty white space below the last grey bar? We are hoping to have this space filled in with Pinterest-styled thumbnails/images. The Browse page is not meant to fulfill the same purpose as the search feature. This is a place to get new ideas, look around, and bookmark clips away that look interesting. Thus we hope that as more and more people add things to TeachersClips one can just scroll down and look at what is new. Of course if you want to see something specific or search the tags that is what the search feature is for. The top three lines of clips will be constant ("Related to your subject", "New clips", and "Most viewed?). What do you think? Is there a better way? Would you use this site if it was fully functional?

"Making Curriculum Pop" and Nailing It

Recently I discovered an amazing social network for teachers called "Making Curriculum POP". Not only do all the teachers in the network share the same desire to utilize pop culture in the classroom, but they actually respond and help one another. I say this as if I am some expert on social network sites, or interacting with teachers - neither of which is remotely true. It is simply refreshing to go to a place where so many people are gathered together, working in a united way, and answering questions in a generous and open manner.

If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend taking a minute or two to set up a profile and start getting to know a few people on the site. Hopefully I will continue to form friendships and learn with the other educators who give valuable advice and share helpful experience. It is good for a youngster like me!

Yesterday I had the fortunate chance to visit with Peter Gutierrez who authors an excellent blog titled "Connect the Pop".  He gave me some helpful counsel about my emerging crowdsourced-movieclips-in-the-classroom concept, which it turns out he had already done a great deal of work on a few years back. In light of his feedback, and that of a faculty consultant where I work, I feel that this project faces a crucial fork in the road (and potentially multiple forks). Right now I am trying to "nail" the concept in my mind in a way that others can understand and visualize it - and perhaps after using it to help the 7th/8th grade students this semester it well flesh out a bit more. Once the concept is truly pinned down then I think that is when I really need to start figuring out whether this would be a good non-profit model, small-business model, or something along those lines. But at the same time, the counsel from my digital culture teacher is important to keep in mind. He has taught me that we don't have to always think like print culture has taught us. You don't have to have a complete and polished concept before trying to move it forward and get feedback on it. I need to round out my idea more, but I have already discovered that I don't have to have a flashy product before experts are willing to give me social proof.

What I am learning and enjoying about this whole process is that I am entering a place in my life and education that is no longer moderated by a teacher or a professional. For the first time it seems that it is completely up to me to go out and make strong connections with others, learn what I need to do, and choose to act upon the things I feel are most important. It is very exciting, and at times extremely frightening. I mean, there is no right answer. This age of information, with all of the tools to consume, create and connect, provides an abundance of opportunity I feel I am only just rubbing up against.

Adding a bookmark feature to the movie clips?

Yesterday I was chatting with a close friend about the movie clip data base concept and he gave me some great advice and asked some important questions. From our conversation I feel a sense of importance in building this site/program in a manner that can involve teachers in as many ways as possible. Similar to this amazing site, my friend encouraged me to consider making it more social and interactive. Rather than just teachers sharing clips to the site and crowdsourcing the database - teachers can share ideas via a forum or comments section about how to use different clips and other ideas. Like YouTube or Vimeo it would be neat to create a kind of "view list" in which a teacher could drag clips into a backpack or folder for lessons they plan on doing in the future.

These ideas reminded me of social bookmarking and the power in sites like Diigo and Delicious. If teachers could bookmark movie clips within the site, they won't have to go and look for a particular clip when it comes time to prepare the lesson. Rather, teachers can build their "to-view" list as they run across clips that look like they may be helpful down the line.

I really like the idea of making things more interactive and social. Teachers ought to be able to not only share information and ask each other questions, but the site should also lend itself to quick and easy access - especially if we integrated a "student view" at some point for teachers who are flipping their classrooms.

Making Progress

I am currently in a class titled Digital Culture in the English Department of my university, and the professor of the course advised us to make our thought process transparent as we think through things and look for social proof on our ideas. This post runs along that vein.

The semester for me is full of nodes, media, and discussions of digital technology and culture. I am taking 3 courses that directly address these issues: a film course with an emphasis on documentary, an education seminar focused on educational technology and social media, and the English class I mentioned earlier. Being immersed in these courses has fueled my desire to act on the idea for a teacher-crowdsourced database of movie clips that I had about 2 years ago. It is exciting to finally start acting on the idea in the form of this blog, my Diigo group, on Twitter, and a variety of other ways. Hopefully I can start moving the idea in a more concrete way - and I have some confidence that there may be some open doors out there as I have been receiving very positive responses from folks I consider to be experts in the field.

Here are two sketches of possible interface designs. I am heavily influenced by movieclips.com, Youtube, theteachingchannel, and a bit of Vimeo. These artifacts of modern art are probably incomprehensible.

So right now I am trying to flesh out my "database idea" (I need to find a better name for it!) as I continue learning about digital literacy, transmedia storytelling, and listen to a host of interesting podcasts about the current political situation and movements in education. I am really getting stuck on the seeming fact that everyone may have a different understanding of what the purpose of school actually is. It makes sense to me that there is so much controversy about our system - because the variety of what people think schools should be doing for kids and young adults is varied. I feel like this is a key issue.

I plan on graduating with my film and English degree in April 2013, and from there I am not sure what will become of me. Teach For America is a hopeful option right now, and I am also looking at a few instructional design programs (BYU, USU, ISU, and maybe Georgia) I could start next fall. There are so many things I care about and want to dip my toe in, but I am trying to just take deep breaths and ease into the waters of post-graduation life.

Teachers Crowdsourcing?

From what I have read, heard, and experienced, teaching students who are not paying attention or engaged in the material is extremely ineffective. I agree with writer MarkPhillips when he wrote: “Film can be used as a culminating experience to summarize a unit or lesson. It can be studied as an art form. Short films designed to teach a concept or skill, especially in a subject like physical education, can be very useful. Developing students' critical consciousness of visual media should be a major part of every school's curriculum and is important enough a subject to be the focus of a forthcoming column.” Many teachers have turned to movie clips to use as glimpses into a subject, discussion instigators, and as opportunities to teach.

So my question is why isn’t there a place for teachers to share ideas of movie or song clips from popular culture with one another? What if there were a site or curated area on the web where teachers could work together to build a crowd-sourced database of popular culture clips to be used in the classroom? It could be organized by subject, topic, and/or discipline, and then meta-tagged with specific lessons (like PEMDAS in math or the signing of the Declaration of Independence in history).  This could be an open source site, used specifically by teachers to increase student engagement and motivation.

What do you think? Would this be a better tool for flipped classrooms? Is there a big enough need and passion in the teacher community to make something like this happen?

Check out my "beta site" on the tab above - and let me know what you think.