The Roots of Community Education

In one of our classes last week, Alec had mentioned using the Miro application to download videos onto your computer and as I am a big fan of Miro, I thought I’d take this time to share with you some of it’s potential uses in education. Miro is essentially an internet TV application that allows you to subscribe to any number of channels that have RSS feed and release videos on a regular basis. Some of my favourite channels that I subscribe to include Ted Talks (brilliant lectures), Democracy Now (daily news casts), Yogamazing (Yoga classes), and the Onion News Network (great satire), just to name a few. New videos from each of these channels are automatically downloaded onto my computer when they are released and are easily managed through Miro.

Another channel that I subscribe to that I think is particularly relevant to teaching the Social Studies 20 - World Issues course is No Comment News, courtesy of the EuroNews network. What is great about this channel is that it provides up-to-date current events footage from around the world and offers “no comment” on what is happening. These videos are usually 2 minutes or less and have no newscasters explaining what is happening or the context behind what is being shown. Instead, it is up to the viewer to decipher what is going on and why this event is taking place. If I were showing it to a group of students, I would first ask them questions such as:

1) What do you see happening in this video?
2) What is the historical and/or current context behind what is being shown?
3) Where is this taking place?
4) Who are some of the key people that are being shown in this video and how do you see them being portrayed.

Students would then have an opportunity to investigate these questions further by viewing on-line news reports or newspaper articles that offer up commentary on the current situation.

Once students have a better understanding of what is happening, you could then have them take the assignment one step further and turn it into a multimedia project by embedding these videos into iMovie and have students layer in an accompanying news story where they would offer their own commentary on the video footage. I would expect to find that the commentary between student groups will vary, depending on where they have accessed their information fom. Once each group has offered their insights, you could then take it one step further by investigating the different biases that might be identified within each student group’s piece.

Check out the videos on their site. (Unfortunately, edublogs will not allow me to embed one of their videos I have downloaded because “it does not meet security guidelines”. Does anybody know a way around this?) Images often speak for themselves. As far as comments go, draw your own.