YouTube.

YouTube was the next part which I covered in the Digital Technologies topic, and I must say that prior to this course I was familiar with using YouTube and I absolutely love it! The thing that I love most about YouTube is the fact that is has basically anything you want on it, readily available for you to use whenever and wherever you want. Although YouTube does contain a lot of unsuitable classroom material, it does contain a large amount of educational content which is of a high quality. Therefore, in order to ensure that students are viewing appropriate material you do have the option to upload your desired video onto your class website, or use the free service on the internet called KeepVid as these options ensure that the students are watching the material that you have selected (Central Queensland University, 2009).

After exploring both YouTube and a similar website called TeacherTube (Central Queensland University, 2009), I have decided that I prefer to use YouTube as I am familiar with it and find it easier to find educational material to meet my learning experiences’ intended learning outcomes. However, I look forward to exploring TeacherTube in a greater depth in the future as I am sure that I will find material on there that is useful for my classroom environment to suit a range of my learning experiences.

In order to incorporate ICT’s into my mathematics lesson during prac next week, I have decided to use a video off of YouTube. Lately during mathematics it has been noticed that the students have been unengaged when completing their work as they usually just complete a worksheet. As the students will be focusing on 2D and 3D shapes I am going to use an educational song off of YouTube as the hook of the learning experience during the introduction, as I know that the students respond well and usually immediately become engaged with their task when music is involved. I particularly like the video which I have chosen as it allows the students to see various 2D and 3D shapes which are related to their real life experiences, and because students are challenged in the video by being asked to look around their environment and count the different shapes which they can see. I have embedded the video which I am going to use into this post, and you can access it by clicking below:

Shapes from ‘Classroom’- DVD for children to learn basic concepts (ClassRoomContents, 2008).



Reference List:
Central Queensland University (CQU). (2009). FAHE11001- Managing E-Learning: Moodle site. Rockhampton, QLD, Australia: Scot Aldred.

ClassRoomContents. (2008). Shapes from ‘Classroom’- DVD for children to learn basic concepts. Retrieved August 14, 2009, from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm_mb0HTv-o&feature=related