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?

What can we learn from Batman?

Below is a very handy little resource from Peter Gutierrez about what can be taught and discussed with senior students in regards to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. It is an excellent resource, and is a great example of the rich resource that pop culture can be if properly approached.

(Published by Metromagazine's Screen Education)

I hope that we can see more discussions and resources like this in the future as parents and teachers take the time to understand why students like certain films, and then help them understand the social and political climates in which these films were created in.

Flipping the Classroom

So I have talked about how there is potential for teachers to come together, share movie clip ideas, and ultimately bring the wisdom of crowds together to increase relevancy and engagement in the classroom. As I ran this idea by some people, I was asked a thought provoking question: are these video clips only to be shown in class? Or is there another way that teachers can use pop culture clips to bring students' interest and attention to material? This question immediately led me to thinking about flipped classrooms.

Salman Khan's TED talk is probably one of the most influential "documents" we have on the power and impact of flipping the classroom. While there has been some debate about whether Khan and his hugely popular site khanacademy.com is truly a worthy source of good education - it is hard to deny the fact that a movement (or at least a very prominent fad) has resulted in thousands of teachers changing the way they work with students in the classroom.


Katie, and 8th grade teacher, has taken the time to upload many videos about how she is using the concept of flipping the classroom. If the term is new or unfamiliar to you - she explains it pretty well.

So what if teachers not only used clips of movies in their classroom to ignite meaningful discussions or prompts for analysis - but made watching such clips a part of their outside learning? Even better, what if  teachers had students look for their own samples of pop culture in the movies, games, and media they encounter outside of school? 

I may be kicking a dead horse here, but kids want to learn when they see the relevance of what they are learning. When they start to see that what they are learning in school is all around them in their every day life then meaningful connections are made. 

So, what do you think? Can this new trend or learning method - call it what you will - be a strong asset to using pop culture in education?