Movies to Develop Leadership in Educational Technology

As the year ends, I am republishing the Opinion Drive-thru's seven most viewed posts of 2013.  This is #1

During the first meetings of my Leadership in Technology College of Education course (ED 6270) at Madonna University I have used some short YouTube movies for both the face-to-face and online versions of the course.

Developing Professional Learning Networks

This is a one minute movie about an Australian teacher training program that shows teachers the benefits in using Twitter. After watching it, my students-- all full time teachers-- wanted me to prepare a lesson on it as well.

An Illustration of Flipped Classroom: The Full Picture

During our first class we looked at Reuben Puentedura’s SAMR Model, agreeing that at its very basic

level, the “flipped classroom” is more of a case of technology allowing for substitution of lecture supplied by technology for a live lecture.  In other words, it is not a “game changer” so much as a new strategy for using conventional methods. instruction rather than redefinition.  Jackie Gerstein’s video suggests ways to attain redefinition of instruction through flipping.

Henry Jenkins on Participatory Culture

This is a fascinating video with all kinds of implications.  I am asking my students to reflect on the educational ramifications in our online discussion forum.

Ken Robinson: How to Escape Education's Death Valley

Ken Robinson is a titan of the TEd Talks series.  We are going to use his latest video as a way to break ground on pour big professional development project.

Four Friday Quotes from TED

Lots of people are used to having a spiritual tribe or a church tribe , a work tribe, a community tribe. But now thanks to the internet, the explosion of mass media . . . . Tribes are everywhere. The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead, what it's allowed is silos of interest. . . .People on the fringes can find each other, connect and go somewhere. . . .What we do for a living now, all of us, I think, is find something worth changing and then assemble tribes that spread the idea [until it] becomes something far bigger than ourselves. It becomes a movement.

Seth Godin, The Tribes We Lead, TED Talk, Feb. 2009

Organizations designed around a culture of generosity can achieve enormous effects without an enormous amount of contractual overhead-- a very different model than our default model for large scale group action from the Twentieth Century.

Clay Shirky, How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World, TED Talk, June. 2010

The story that Americans tell, the story upon which the American Dream depends, the story of limitless choice. . .promises so much-- freedom, happiness, success. . . . It's a great story, but when you take a close look, you start to see the holes. . . . Americans have so often tried to disseminate their narrative of choice. . . .but the history book and the daily news tell us it does not always work out that way. No single narrative serves the needs of everyone, everywhere. Moreover, Americans theme selves could benefit from incorporating new perspectives into their own narrative, which have been driving their choices for so long. . . . It brings us so much closer to realizing the full potential of choice, to inspiring the hope and achieving the freedom that choice promises but doesn't always deliver.

Sheena Iyengar, The Art of Choosing TED Talk, July. 2010

There are things that we are enthralled to in education . . . one of them is linearity. It starts here, and you go through a track, and if you do everything right, you will end up set for the rest of your life. . . . We have become obsessed with this linear narrative. . . .[However,] human communities depend on a diversity of talent, not a single conception.

Sir Kenneth Robinson, Bring on the Learning Revolution, TED Talk, May. 2010