Teacher Tools

This month we review a number of web tools for teachers. That is websites that have been made for teachers and often by teachers to help us in our work. Some of them offer us resources, others templates to create lesson plans. Some have the facility to allow us to upload our materials and share them more widely. First up, TeacherTube

TeacherTube: (http://www.teachertube.com)

This site is structured very similarly to the more well known YouTube but has as its focus educational videos that have been posted by teachers and their students. These videos are not developed by professional publishing houses and vary in quality. The range of videos, however, is extensive. Teachers can search for videos appropriate to their courses by looking through organised channels of clustered titles. A quick peruse will identify channels dedicated to Fine Art, Physical Education, Social Sciences, Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Science and Health amongst other titles. Even though the site has only been operational since 2007 there are already over 3000 videos in each channel.

Registered users can also make use of the community features that are available in the site. You can form or join a group that has similar interests to you. As a history teacher I was particularly impressed by a group set up for my very needs. It contains 88 members and has pooled together for easy access some 61 videos. This makes searching for a specific video very easy. For example I was looking for some Cold War videos and came across visual material on the Nagasaki bombing, the Berlin Airlift, Cuban Missile Crisis and a teacher’s general introduction to the main themes. Some of the materials were old news reels while others were teacher presentations or video work.

A word of warning, though, is that the site is bandwidth heavy. I was viewing the site recently on a home ADSL line and the videos ran seamlessly but I would imagine that on a 256k modem or on a heavily used institutional line it would take some time to download the stream. If you intend to teach with these materials then you might want to start the video and pause it at the beginning of your class (allowing the stream to download in the background) so that you can show it to the learners at the end of your lesson.

From a teaching and learning perspective, however, the passive viewing of an educational video, no matter how good it is, is problematic. As TeacherTube is a Web 2.0 community it makes much more sense to encourage our learners to create educational videos and then post them up onto the web. Creating assignments for a world audience often motivates learners to go the extra mile. My experience is that they craft excellent work when they realise the exposure their work will get. So using digital video cameras, still cameras, PowerPoint and other editing software encourage the learners to research, author and present a segment of your lesson in a visual format. One of my criticisms of the TeacherTube database of videos is that it is currently predominantly American in bias or Eurocentric. I feel our learners should provide the world with a slice of the African perspective!

Teacher Tools (http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/tools/index.html)

This American site is compiled by Jefferson County Schools and is really a comprehensive list of links to both curriculum and technical tools. The curriculum tools cover Reading, Science, Social Studies, Physical Education, Maths, Art, Music, Drama and Driver education amongst other specialised topics. The technical section offers tools for creating materials: Sounds, Clip art, interactive web sites, PowerPoint etc. Some of the links are disappointing but others are quite stunning. I investigated the Visual Arts section and was amazed at some of the engaging interactive tutorials available on subjects like Power of Colour, Colour, Contrast and Dimensions, and the Physiology and Theory of Colour.  I also had a good look around in the PowerPoint section of the technical section and was impressed with the tools and tutorials on how to use the presentation package effectively in your teaching.

Thutong (http://www.thutong.org.za)

Don’t forget good old Thutong. Besides all the new communication tools that allows you to express your views they also have a CD cutting tool that allows you to receive your selection of favourite resources from the curriculum database. This is especially useful to those teachers who struggle with poor bandwidth. Another tool allows access to a list of Department of Education approved textbooks. This allows you to choose a South African text for your class that has been given the green light by subject experts within the Department.

We have only just scratched the surface of what is available for us teachers on the Internet so if you have a particular favourite and would like to share your find with other readers send me an e-mail (andryn@iafrica.com) and let me know why you think it’s great. I will compile a list of your responses and publish your recommendations

An edited version of this blog appeared in the The Teacher