Monday, September 16, 2013

Thing #20 YouTube and Beyond


The following video is a very poignant and heartbreaking video about one of the poorest rural school districts in South Carolina.  Being from South Carolina and an education minor during undergrad, I watched the video in class and 4 years later it has remained on my mind.  Funding schools based on property taxes is inherently unfair and leads to situations like the one below....

CORRIDOR OF SHAME

I chose this video because in 6th grade I went to a similar school as those depicted above. It was built close to 100 years ago, we had leaks in the ceiling and problems with our heating and air.  I got the feeling that the teachers didn't want to be there, by how much they complained about the facility and I felt almost like I was a burden to them.  I always say that had I finished middle school at that school and graduated in that district I would not be in college right now.  We had very inadequate resources and though I was in sixth grade in 2001 I cannot recall a time we had access to a computer or internet in school.  I was not prepared for my seventh grade year when I moved schools and it took me the whole year to catch up. However, not every chid is as fortunate as I was to have parents who worked extremely hard to move so that I could go to school in a better district.  For those students who stay in these poor rural districts their future is oftentimes very grim.

From the other online tools and applications site we were redirected to I was excited to see Vine listed.  Vine is a site that allows you to upload short videos, only 6 seconds in length, and they run on a continuous loop.  Its amazing to see what people can accomplish in this short time frame and how funny a looped video can be!  I think having students create a video in vine would be a fun activity to do since it won't eat up too much class time, only about 6 seconds.  I think it would even be interesting to have them create a tutorial about how to do something in Vine.  For example maybe show/explain the method for tying their shoes.  This will help students become more concise in their writing and learn to differentiate between important and non important information.






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