EduBlog Insights

I met Rushton Hurley at EduBloggers.com He now teaches part time but the bulk of his waking moments are spent on a non-profit organization that he started called Next Vista for Learning. Here’s how Rushton explained the site:

“It is a place where there is an online library of videos by and for teachers and students. It is totally free. The idea is just to be able to say if you’ve got a great way to teaching a skill or concept share that in a video that is five minutes or less ideally using media in some engaging way that some kid who is having trouble understanding that topic could say “Oh that’s what it is.” Because it is free to them they don’t have to stop and have it explained to them. They don’t have to feel stupid. They can just go somewhere and see what has been contributed

He said it was a young effort so far. They have 70 or 80 videos up right now. They have 3 collections so far, those just mentioned, communities around the world and another to highlight the good that people do in the world. They want to build interest in the research related to the efficacy of these videos. They want to show that this has an effect on how students recall what they are learning in class.”

The video collections are light bulbs, global views, and seeing service. See the FAQ on his site. I think this effort is one we need to follow. I really liked his discussions on staying on content. He talked about how most video production traditionally has been about the teacher in front of the room and what they are doing. Of course that has value but in a teacher preparation program he thinks it would be far more valuable to have teachers learning to make videos for a student audience where they tell how they use media to get a topic across to kids effectively in 5 minutes or less. That gets the teacher to stop and think about what are the core elements of what he/she is about to teach. I met up with Rushton again at the visual arts playground. He even gave me some one on one instruction on video production. I’m thinking that we need to get the kids going on these types of lessons too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 9:40 am and is filed under Conferences, NECC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.