What a fantastic resource! Russell Street has obviously invested a large amount of time and effort into creating their blogging platform. At first glance there is a ton of content on the homepage alone and they have done a great job organizing it. I really enjoy that in two clicks you can get from the homepage to any individual student blog. That is usually very difficult to do especially with this much content. Also it is very neatly organized into three sections. The nav bar, the main content bar and the side bar. The only suggestion I could make here would be to move towards more of a responsive design as so much internet traffic is mobile now.
As I was perusing the content I was really impressed with the quality of work especially the video content. As a former high school technology teacher I understand the amount of work and effort that is required to create even a simple 3-4 minute video. The video that Liam created about the orangutans that participated in the Sydney film festival would have taken weeks to complete. The stop motion alone was very well done and the research that he did was very informative. I wonder if all the videos created are done by students or if some are done by teachers or if there is a staff member whose job description includes the creation of the videos?
I also noticed that most of the videos are uploaded to YouTube. I have no idea how old the account owners are but this has been a problem we have run into at our school. According to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act a person must be at least 13 years old to have their own YouTube account. As we have a GAFE domain at our school its imperative that we are diligent in making sure no one younger than 13 sets up an account or we could possibly lose our domain. I wonder what Russell Street does to avoid this? I suppose the teachers of the classes might post all the videos but that would be time consuming and onerous. We've recently invested in an in house video database for students under 13 but this limits the publishing of material to be only internal.
Ever since I have been a teacher one of the biggest discussions we have had as a staff every year is how to keep parents informed. I really love what Russell Street has done in this regard. Not only do the student blogs have lots of pictures and videos they also include the work of students and oftentimes images of rubrics so that parents can stay informed on a regular basis from home.
As I was perusing the content I was really impressed with the quality of work especially the video content. As a former high school technology teacher I understand the amount of work and effort that is required to create even a simple 3-4 minute video. The video that Liam created about the orangutans that participated in the Sydney film festival would have taken weeks to complete. The stop motion alone was very well done and the research that he did was very informative. I wonder if all the videos created are done by students or if some are done by teachers or if there is a staff member whose job description includes the creation of the videos?
I also noticed that most of the videos are uploaded to YouTube. I have no idea how old the account owners are but this has been a problem we have run into at our school. According to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act a person must be at least 13 years old to have their own YouTube account. As we have a GAFE domain at our school its imperative that we are diligent in making sure no one younger than 13 sets up an account or we could possibly lose our domain. I wonder what Russell Street does to avoid this? I suppose the teachers of the classes might post all the videos but that would be time consuming and onerous. We've recently invested in an in house video database for students under 13 but this limits the publishing of material to be only internal.
Ever since I have been a teacher one of the biggest discussions we have had as a staff every year is how to keep parents informed. I really love what Russell Street has done in this regard. Not only do the student blogs have lots of pictures and videos they also include the work of students and oftentimes images of rubrics so that parents can stay informed on a regular basis from home.
Hi Bryan! I appreciate that you brought up COPPA. I have had parents in the past that have brought up COPPA numerous times regarding iPad use, creating accounts, etc, so I've become somewhat knowledgeable regarding it. :) I am curious about what Russell Street School does as well. My school hasn't fully allowed YouTube yet (teacher access only) so it would be a teacher upload only situation for me. When I have created videos in the past and uploaded, it was rather time consuming!
ReplyDeleteHi Marne:
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. We ran into this issue last year at our school when a couple of sixth grade students tried to activate their account and had their entire google account locked. It's impossible to have the account unlocked unless you can provide ID stating that you are thirteen. We had to create them entirely new accounts and then go into our Google Admin account and group students by graduating year and restrict access to certain apps by grad year.
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