A Successful Failure

A couple of years back (in 2009) I went and recorded about 70 math instructional videos and put them up on my YouTube channel.  I was very excited about how it might be a way to help my students work at home.  Our school has very poor attendance and I was pulling my hair out about how low my success rate with with senior math.  Each video was 5 minutes or less and were intended to be simple - only one concept per video.  I even organized them (in many cases with classroom notes) on my section of the school webpage.

The project was an overwhelming failure - and now it has become a different success that I am proud of.

First the failure.  My students did not use the resource.  I tried to sell them on the idea but failed.  The time, effort, and resources were wasted.  It failed for two main reasons.  One - very few of my students had high speed internet at home.  Today it is still shocking how little access my students still have.  Two - my students rarely did (or do) homework.

As time has gone on other people have been finding my videos.  Comments from students all over have been filtering in.

THIS IS AMAZING, YOU'RE A LIFESAVERR!! = )

Thank you so much! Now I get it haha. THANKS! >_<

It is obvious that the comments have been coming from students - not teachers.  People are finding my videos useful.  The hours I put into creating them have not been wasted.

Last week one of my math videos even hit 10,000 views.  I am not sure why that particular video has been viewed so many times.  (Yes I realize that you aren't anybody on YouTube until a video has hit half a million hits).  It is not one of my better ones - in fact I created it on a whim and almost didn't upload it.

This year some of my students have finally started using the resource.  Finally.  When a sub teacher comes in they prefer to watch my videos than listen to somebody else explain the concept.  They are used to the way that I teach.  It is about time.

This fall near the beginning of the school year some of the Central Office staff started getting excited about online learning resources like the Khan Academy.  One of our consultants mentioned my name and pointed out that I had already done this with my math videos.  (Thank you Donna.)  For the record I think that most of the assistant superintendents had already seen my videos but had merely forgotten about them.  Sometimes it feels good to be on the right end of the curve.

The math video project is still a failure.  The students that I am paid to teach have not really used it a lot (and my goal was to help MY students).  I can admit the failure but I am still proud of what I created and what it has accomplished.

I am Giving Up.

I am tired.  I am frustrated.  I (we) have failed.  I am giving up....... and I am ashamed of it.

I have made a difficult decision.  It goes against a lot of what I believe.  It goes against a lot of what I have been reading and what the big names in educational technology have been saying but I think I have to do it anyways.  With the support of my administration I am getting our internet content filter back.  We will be blocking YouTube and Facebook (as well as other similar sites).

I have failed because we have been unable to teach the students to use our internet responsibly.  When logging into a computer it was very common for students to start by firing up a YouTube video, logging into Facebook, and then finally getting down to their real work.  In the meantime they were not focused on their actual assignment.  It was not just a few bad apples.  It was a large percentage of the students.  I know because I have spent a lot of time using the monitoring software.  Many students would only bring up their work when the teacher was nearby.  I know how easy it is to hide.

Facebook was also becoming a larger social issue.  Students were bullying over it and using it to organize fights.  We were not getting through to them when it came to digital citizenship and their online presence.  Yes I know that the students will still have access to Facebook on their cellphones.  (And for the record our no cellphone policy just sort of petered out - no formal end to it.  That is another story.)

YouTube was primarily a bandwidth issue.  Listening to music online was not a real problem - in fact it cut down on other management problems.  It is a shame to block online video because many of us do use it to teach with.  Myself I have about 70 math videos posted up.  It did not seem to matter how many time I explained our bandwidth problems, how many times I gave warnings, or how many times I suspended accounts.  Students were usually using YouTube for non-educational purposes.  They were using it a lot.

So is it permanent?  I sure hope not.  If I have my way we quit cold turkey and after a little while we start to reintroduce the sites teaching responsibility as we go.





Needless to say I have given up.  I am tired of the daily fight and once again I am ashamed.  What a great way to end the year.

Cando Community School Graduating Class of 2011

Online Video Statistics

The average canadian watches over 605 minutes of online video every month.

That is what I heard on CBC Radio today on my drive in to work.  We watch an average of 10 hours a month.  Here is a link to some of the stats that they are quoting.  We are the top country for the amount of online video watched.  (The radio host figured it might have something to do with winter.)

Now you tell me we shouldn't be using this for and in education.

You tell me that we should be blocking these sites.

You tell me that we can't afford the bandwidth to use these tools.

Then get out of the way of my bus.

Photo Credit  http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheany/2233392126/

Time Lapse Holiday Cheer

Well I finally got it to work. My time lapse video works! Windows Movie Maker was painful to work with - but it did work. I shouldn't complain about a free tool - but I am going to. My computer crashed three times while trying to make the movie. Converting the photos into a video in the program was actually quite easy (read about how to do it here). Title and credits were easy to add. However I almost gave up when I tried to save the video. I could save the project quite easily but had problems trying to save it in a format that could be played in any other player. Turns out that I am not alone in having this problem. I think that the problem was that my computer did not have enough memory. I finally got it to work by lowering the output video quality. Thanks to the people who gave me any help getting Windows Movie Maker to work.

I took the pictures with a little Logitech webcamera that my school division bought for me. It did not handle the low light in my living room very well (as you can see). I think that it would work fine in a brighter room. I used the Microsoft Powertoys program Webcam Timershot to take a picture every two seconds. This guide pointed me to the tools I needed. It also showed some other methods that also looked good (both Mac and PC). Next time I try this I will use another camera - maybe a hacked Cannon camera like in this post.

I guess that I should also point to Dean Shareski's post Supper's Ready in 80 Seconds that originally gave me the idea.

My next step is to try to recreate this video (using the same pictures) on a Mac in iMovie. I will let you know how the process compared to Windows.

Could This Work?

So I had an idea the other day. Now usually when I get an idea it either is expensive or gets me into trouble (or both). I don't think that this is either.

We are having bandwidth issues at school. Not a secret to any of you who are in the same division as me. One of the culprits is YouTube. YouTube is a wonderful teaching tool - but it is also a great big bandwidth pig. Lots of our students run it in the backgroud so they can listen to music as they work (and many just use that as an excuse to get out of trouble). If it truly is just for music then the video is wasted bandwidth. We should be pushing internet radio stations instead. If I am not mistaken internet radio should use less bandwidth - it only has the audio part of the stream.

Ok - the problem isn't solved yet but wait until I get to phase two of my idea. I remember a conversation I had with a buddy of mine (who used to be a network tech for another division). Their office was in the same building as one of the schools. All of the office staff (about 7-8 people) listened to internet radio stations. During working hours those 7-8 machines running internet radio where enough to slow the entire school down.

Phase two - How do we provide music to the entire school without slowing everyone down? What about streaming music from our server at school? Only one machine would need to be downloading the internet radio and then distribute it out to the workstations. We should be able handle the traffic within our local network. One machine streaming music vs a bunch plugging the pipe? Sounds like a solution that gives the students what they want and helps us get more work done.

A side benefit of us streaming the music in is that we have some control over whether the music is appropriate or not. (There I go thinking like a teacher again!)

There would be a couple of technical details that would need to be worked out but isn't that what we have a Tech Department for?

So could it work or is there a big ole flaw in the plan?

A Job Application to Remember

My cousin pointed this guy out to me. He is apparently from Saskatoon and has a wonderful sense of humor. His video Garson Hampfield, Crossword Inker is also a work of genius.

Too bad he did not get the job.

End of the Year Teaching - Another Fun Parody

Pcone and P. Fjeldstrom both have been having some fun with Monty Python teaching parody videos. I figured I should add in my impressions of end of the year teaching. Pay close attention to the monks.

Video Games and Sex

Thankyou Alec Couros for pointing me to this video.


It is a great little video talking about how sex is used in the video game industry. I goes beyond complaining about it. It talks about appropriate ways to include it. A video like this is almost enough to make we wish that I taught some sort of social studes class...almost.

Downloading YouTube Videos

So the Network Powers That Be won't let you use your own laptop at school (or YouTube is blocked) and you really want to show that awesome YouTube video you found the night before. What do you do? Whine, Moan, and Complain - right? Well not anymore.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/download-youtube-videos-as-mp4-files.html

This link describes how to download YouTube videos onto your computer. It saves them as MP4 files that should work on many players (except Windows Media Player). I am hooked.

One little problem - downloading these videos violates YouTube's terms of use.

Saturating the Download Pipe

We have been having some latency problems at school recently. Our administrators have not been able to log into their interactive network applications at the Division office. They have been timing out. For you technical geeks out there the latency has been anywhere from 1000 to 1400 ms. Not good. Well, the computer powers that be have found one of the problems.

The delays are being caused by extensive internet use at the school
saturating the download pipe.

In plain English we were plugging up our connection with internet use. So they looked at our webpage hits. Here is some of what the logs said:

http://www.bebo.com/ - 30%
http://www.youtube.com/ - 10%
http://www.messengerfx.com/ - 8%

Wow. That is almost half of our webpage hits. Well the authority figure in me automatically jumped to "We have to stop that - ban those sites, block them, make them go away!" That voice in my head immediatly want to control things. Another little voice said that those figures are embarrasing. I already knew that the computer powers that be are convinced that our students are out of control.

"But wait a minute, what do those numbers mean? Get over the initial gut reaction and have a real good look at them." Great, another voice. This is the one that makes my life difficult.

http://www.youtube.com/ - 10%
Ok some teachers use this site for teaching purposes. At least one uses it extensively in Social Studies and Native Studies. The students often also use this site to listen to music while they work. (And I see them listening to things like this as often as mainstream music). "And didn't we fight to get YouTube unblocked?" But we do seem to spend a lot of time fighting the students who are just watching videos for entertainment. It does also use a whole pile of bandwidth. Maybe internet radio is a better choice for music. Does it use much less bandwidth?

http://www.messengerfx.com/ - 8%
Umm, can't think of too many legitimate educational reasons our students are using MSN messenger. "But really, how much bandwidth does it really take up?" "It distracts the students from their learning!" There go the voices again.

http://www.bebo.com/ - 30%
This site does seem to be the first thing students log onto when they get their hands on the keyboard. It is chock full of big fat pictures as well. I just had a discussion about it with one of my co-workers. He doesn't have a real problem with it. He tells his students that if they have been researching hard and need to take a 5 min Bebo break to refresh then go ahead. And some of them follow this guideline fairly well. He also claims to have seen students chatting about an assignment through this site. "That's crazy talk!" "No they are social networking!" I don't know about this site. I personally find that it really distracts students when they are supposed to be working. I suspect it also chews through the bandwidth with all those pictures.

So what do we do? I do know that our whole system really bogs down when the computer lab is full. Any work involving the internet is difficult to do. I guess that it should be fairly obvious. Keep the students off of entertainment based YouTube during classtime (same with Bebo). "This should be fun."

I am curious to find out what these numbers look like in other schools. Are we as out of control as the computer powers that be claim? (Please say no, please say no, please say no.)