Nothing fantastically revolutionary going on here but it give me a reason to blog a few things.

The BBC’s education website has posted this today, Alva Academy in Clackmannanshire (near Stirling fact fans) is posting vodcasts of lessons for students to download. Check Alva Academy’s site for examples.

Neat idea although a few places have tried this already. They are posting the videos on Teacher Tube, an educational version of You Tube which links nicely to my previous post about You Tube access in schools. Might revisit that in wee while.

The technology they’ve used to create the videos is very accessible and with a bit of training most people should be able create things like this. The maths ones have been done with simple screen capture software and I think the music ones have used Adobe Premiere Elements but iMovie or Movie Maker would be just as good.

What I wonder is what the impact is going to be. I’d love to know what impact this has in;

    a) which students use these, how often and for how long and
    b) what impact it has on attainment?

It’s something that has been troubling me recently. I’m sure with the “global financial melting crunch” (or whatever they’re calling it this week) someone is going to be asking what value for money IT investment in schools and CLC’s in particular actually give. Unless we can point to hard and fast benefits that result from use of ICT, sources of funding might mysteriously start disappearing.

A quick Google search on effectiveness of ICT in schools brings up a load of studies and reports saying it does but that the link is not strong. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that just dumping ICT in schools and expecting it to transform anything is a waste of everyone’s time. Think of all the unused whiteboards, tablet PC’s, video cameras etc gathering dust in classrooms and cupboards.

I’d like to know how it goes at Alva. Good luck to them, I hope we get a chance to see how they get on.

Here’s a thought, though. Why shouldn’t it be the students that create these video lessons, not just the teachers? (UPDATE 23/09/08- see Stuart Clyde’s reply to this post. That’s how to do it! Learning going both ways. Note to self – check a bit more thoroughly before spouting off!)