Digital Media
Three places to consider:
 |
Description of the site:
TeacherTube is a new site that was officially launched on March 6, 2007. Jason Smith, an educator for 14 years, came up with the idea as he wondered why teachers, students, and schools couldn’t utilize the power of Web2 for learning. Alongside his brother Adam, considered a digital native and more apt to solve technical issues, and Jodie, Jason’s wife and also an educator, they developed the site, found a web host, began populating the site with videos and worked on improving communication.
TeacherTube’s goal is to be a better alternative to other video storage sites. They aim to provide a safer, educationally based online community for sharing instructional videos for teachers, schools, and home learners.
Uses:
Just like in Youtube, members can:
- Upload, tag and share videos worldwide.
- Browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members.
- Find, join and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests.
- Customize the experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, and creating playlists.
- Integrate TeacherTube videos on websites using video embeds or APIs.
- Make videos public or private - users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite.
Strengths: TeacherTube’s community members are a major part of the evolution of the site. Members are encouraged to not only upload educationally relevant videos, but also to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to one as an educator or learner. Users also have the ability to preserve the integrity of the site by flagging inappropriate videos. TeacherTube staff review flagged sites and will remove any inappropriate posts.
Classroom Application: This site can be used both by students and teachers as they prepare to either showcase something they have learned or utilize media from the site in order to expand a concept.
Weaknesses: I couldn’t find any weaknesses.
Cost: Free
My opinion:
This is a great site with many posibilities, both to get videos to be utilized in the classroom and to upload videos to have others comment on them. The site is easy to manage, and based on what I saw, I could see other educators joining in and adding excellent student work. I can honestly say this is the best web2 demonstration I have seen so far.
Pageflakes Ltd. was founded in Germany in 2006 and is funded by Benchmark Capital. Pageflakes is headquartered in the United States in San Francisco, California, with operations in Bangladesh, Germany and Malaysia.
Description of the site:
Pageflakes is your personalized startpage on the Internet. Your address book, local weather information, to-do-list, news, blogs and much more – all on one page that you can access from anywhere.
Uses: Can be used to group several regularly visited pages and have them accessible in one spot.
Strengths: Ease of use, free site, members are able to customize their pages.
Classroom Application: A class with students in middle school and up might be able to use Pageflakes to gather a list of frequently visited sites that will be used in a particular course.
Weaknesses: Pageflakes is good at what it offers, but there is a limit to what it can offer.
Cost: Free
My opinion: I find Pageflakes very similar to the Google personalized webpage. As it is, I would rather use Google.
Description of the site: Eurekster is “a leading search technology and service provider” that ”empowers communities to own and refine site-based web search” (About page).
Uses: A swicki adds Eurekster’s search engine to your site. It is really a community powered search engine or your own personalized google. Eurekster will rank results based on what actions people who search from your site take. It is based on the premise that there are some common interests between users of any site: teacher sites get visits by teachers, music sites get visits by people who are interested in music. Eurekster recognizes this and shows results that maximize relevance to the sites’ community.
Strengths:
The look, size and shape of the swicki can be customized to fit the design of a site or blog.
Classroom Application: The only classroom application I can think of would be for teachers to have their own search engines or swickis to use for professional development or in lesson creation.
Weaknesses: I have found the Swicki difficult to manage. I still don’t understand how to make full use of it or how to remove unwanted sites that come up to one’s swicki. Since the swicki can be accessed by others, I wouldn’t use it with young students.
Cost: Free
My opinion: I will reserve my opinion for when I get more comfortable with the swicki I created. Right now it serves the purpose of holding bookmarked sites.
