Online Videos

The task of searching for online videos for teaching purposes has become much easier with institutions such as MIT and Yale providing access to their teaching and learning materials online. Educators have a plethora of online resources to choose from. Honestly, it is not difficult to search for it.

I have seen some Biology professors sharing their work online. Publishers have started supplementary teaching materials for textbooks. The decision about using videos and audios resources of course rests with the instructor or educator. It is important that using these online resources cannot be something left to chance. This exercise must be intentional - this means we need to design our teaching for students' learning with online resources and do it in a manner that will benefit them. So, what do we need to do?:

1. Look through the syllabus and determine the topics that may already have online resources out there.
2. Intentionally feature it in your classroom teaching.
3. Use a learning platform/your blog to feature it.
4. Get students to view it again later to reinforce learning.
5. Design quizzes/assignments around it.

I am not teaching this semester but I have my regular training sessions for academic staff. One of the videos I really like is Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture." It is so motivational for educators. I talked about it in one of my sessions but I did not show the video. I will do so in future training sessions.

When I closely examine his dedication to the learning of his students, I am reminded of the primary reason most of us became educators. He talks about his childhood and the way his parents allowed him to be himself. He chronicled his passion to learn and his motivation to make things happen for him and his students. He described the successes of his students and their accomplishments. What a guy! Randy passed away in July 2008 of cancer. Sometimes we just need to hear the same passion and motivation from someone else. Then, we get back on the track of doing the best that we can in what we do. Here is the link to Randy's last lecture.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5700431505846055184