Who Ya Gonna Call?

Carolyn Orf is one of our Business teachers and her students are learning about entrepreneurship and starting a business. Carolyn was interested in having an entrepreneur speak to her students about their experiences and remembered that she went to college with a guy that had gone on to start a couple of companies. She saw him at a wedding about three years ago but otherwise really hadn’t kept in touch with him. So, how to find him? Facebook of course.

She made contact through Facebook (from home, naturally, because our filter is “protecting” us) and asked if he’d be interested in Skyping in to share his experiences and do a question and answer session with her students. He said yes, so we’ll be Skyping during her 5th period class on October 6th, from 12:14 – 1:12 pm MDT. Her other classes can attend via an in-school field trip (if they don’t have anything pressing going on in their 5th period class), and a couple of other Business teachers will bring their 5th period classes as well. We’ll also be ustreaming it out so parents can watch (everyone is welcome to drop in but, as always, we’ll focus on making sure the technology works for the students, the ustream is a bonus).

Oh yeah, the guy? Jason Shellen. He’s currently CEO of Thing Labs. Previously he was an employee of Pyra Labs and worked on Blogger as it was acquired by Google, and he was the founding product manager of Google Reader.

Once again, it's great to see teachers and students reaching out to others, and others being kind enough to give some time. It's so darn easy that I'm wondering what everyone is waiting for? Who could you bring into your classroom?

Research on the Motivational and Educational Aspects of YouTube

Curt Bonk, a professor at Indiana University, is "conducting research on the motivational and educational aspects of YouTube." As he explains in this post:

We are looking at why people post, view, share, comment on, or subscribe to a YouTube video. Areas of interest include motivation, engagement, instructional design, and learning or educational value in a YouTube video. We also inquire about various issues related to the Web 2.0. We ask questions such as "How important are YouTube videos in training and education right now?," "Why would you create a YouTube video? (check all that apply)," "How often do you watch YouTube videos?," "Have you ever shared a YouTube video link with a friend?," and "How important will other forms of Web 2.0 technology such as blogging, Wikipedia, podcasting, online photo albums, and online social networking be for training and education in 5 years?"

The participant is randomly assigned to one of 60 YouTube videos (6 types of videos and 10 videos per category). Each survey has one of the 60 YouTube videos below embedded in it. You can take the survey and help me in this research. If you do, you have a chance to win an iPod or iPhone. In addition, SurveyShare (the sponsor) is giving away 90 days of free unlimited service to anyone who takes the survey.

(Note: I don’t have any connection with Curt, but in the interest of full disclosure both the original Did You Know? and Did You Know? 2.0 are included in his survey. And Curt is also apparently the President of SurveyShare, so there's a marketing aspect to this. For some reason I feel like I should mention those things, even though I don’t think that influenced this post or benefits me – I’m living in strange times . . .)

His post includes all 60 videos if you have a lot of time on your hands. You can take the survey if you wish, or even join the Facebook Group. It will be interesting to see what kind of response he gets and if that translates into some meaningful results.