Into the World of Vlogs
You might be familiar with blogs already. Blogs, which is short for
web logs, are online journals that most of your students, or even you,
use to publish personal or specific posts for public consumption.
Updated on a regular basis, blogs are like podcasts in that users
can subscribe (or link) the blog as an RSS feed. Thus, the blogs with
text, links, multimedia, audio and images can be easily accessible to
whoever is interested.
On the other hand, vlogs are short for video logs. Videos are the
main content, but there can also be text, images, links and audio.
Vlogs are ideal tools for teachers and schools. Creating one does
not require technological expertise. A basic camcorder and a computer
with free editing software and Internet connection would already
suffice!
If students can be assigned to do the recording and editing, then
vlogs can be a great way for them to learn the needed technical skills
relevant in this day and age.
What can you vlog about?
- School events - Since this can be a great way to showcase
the school and the students, pep rallies, guest speakers, plays, dances
and sports can make great videos for the vlog classroom project.
- Student
projects - Students can create videos as a final requirement, to prove
their mastery of a lesson or concept. After they make the video, they
can post it in the vlog and show what they have learned in your
classroom.
- Important lessons - Students can watch a video
over and over again via the vlog, especially if they didn’t understand
the lesson the first time.
With a vlog, parents can see what’s going on in their children’s
schools. It can also be a great visual record of your work as a teacher.
Things to consider would be getting the parents’ permission to have
their children’s images be posted online, how private the vlog would be
(passwords can get tricky), and the access the students have to the
Internet.
For creating vlogs, here are some resources:
Sample vlogs:
Learn Kenny Chesney Guitar – free weekly vlogs on Kenny Chesney teaching the viewer how to play his songs on the guitar
Cooking Kitty Corner – a cooking show vlog by Canadians Kim and Pat
Mefeedia
- is a vlog directory where you can search millions of videos from
different soruces. You can create channels as well or start a video
playlist.
VlogMap
- was launched for the video blogging community, where users submit the
location of their video blog as well as individual video posts. Here,
users can revlog, participate in community forums and can create user
profiles, among others.
Sources:
“How to Video Blog.” Retrieved June 10, 2009 from
http://community.vlogmap.org/support/how_to_video_blog
Siegchrist, Gretchen. “Video Blogging for Teachers.” Retrieved June 10, 2009 from
http://desktopvideo.about.com/od/videoblogging/p/teachervlog.htm
Siegchrist, Gretchen. “How To Create a Free Video Blog.” Retrieved June 10, 2009 from
http://desktopvideo.about.com/od/videoblogging/ht/howtovlog.htm
“What is VlogMap?” Retrieved June 10, 2009 from
http://community.vlogmap.org/about
(Published 22 June 2009, Smart Communications, Inc.)
