A Few Resources for Teachers

Hi everyone.

During my time as an undergrad at Penn State, I interned at the Media Commons, which is a university-wide organization committed to enriching “the teaching and learning experience through multimedia technology, classroom training and direct support for students, faculty, and staff.” I became affiliated with the Media Commons before I even became interested in the education field, but its forward thinking approach and commitment to helping students achieve academic success in non-conventional ways truly opened my eyes to the advantages of utilizing media-related projects in traditional courses.

I posted two links below that might serve as helpful resources for you:

http://mediacommons.psu.edu/

http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/conference/video_archive#2009

The first link is for the Media Commons’ website, which has a ton of great resources for educators. Although people who are not affiliated with Penn State cannot sign up for workshops and consultant support, everybody can access hundreds of software tutorials and an entire library of free, copyright material. I also think there’s some examples of student work available for viewing.

The second link is for the video archive of the keynote speakers from the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Symposium. This is a conference devoted entirely on using technology to enhance teaching, learning, and research (for those of you who went to the School Docs in D.C., the TLT Symposium’s similar to that but on steroids). If anyone is interested in using social media in the classroom, I would suggest watching Danah Boyd’s keynote from 2009. Boyd has devoted her research to studying how young people use social media as part of their everyday lives, and she brings up some interesting issues that all teachers should think about.

I hope these resources can help all of you in your pursuits to effectively implement media into your classrooms.

- Robert