What’s your favorite (educational) online video? Nominations are open!

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Update: thanks for the response to this post, collected at http://video.learningparty.net – feel free to add more clips to the master list of nominations.

As Northern Voice was wrapping up, Jim Groom, D’Arcy Norman and myself got talking about fun things to do in lieu of standard conference presentations. We bashed around the idea of a ‘video dance party’ — essentially eschewing the presentation part of the presentation and just playing our favorite online videos. The night being what it was, we decided to slightly legitimize the approach for immediate submission to the uncannily appropriate NMC Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video.

We knew we needed a bit of extra intellectual muscle to make it work, so we approached Gardner Campbell and begged him for assistance. Within a matter of hours, yet another arbitrary awards program had been born: The Web 2.0 Online Learning Film Festival!

My colleagues and I have designated ourselves as Festival Jurors. From what we hope will be an avalanche of nominations we intend to select a 45 minute program, adding bits of commentary, analysis, trash talk and awards. (All legitimate nominations will be included on a supplementary program.) We intend to use Mojiti (which allows for annotation of online videos) to facilitate the communication of juror and audience input. We will argue about discuss our respective choices during our NMC online presentation on Wednesday, March 21, and when the conference wraps up we’ll open up the discussion to the wider web world.

We need your nominations.

Please pass on your favorite educationally themed online video clips to me or one of the other jurors —Jim, Gardner, or D’Arcy (who is presently offline on a beach or biking down a volcanic mountain or something, but will be back in time). We are looking for works that meet the following criteria:

* They should be awesome.
* They need to be publicly available online (ie does not need to be YouTube).
* Shorter clips will be easier to fit in the program.
* That’s about it.

Wait, what about that “educational theme” we mentioned? I don’t speak for the other jurors (I hope we will take very different approaches) but I intend to define it very broadly. Does the clip communicate a concept? Does it illustrate a principle of persuasive or informative communication? Could it work in a course, if only as an off-beat bit of colour?

Two widely circulated clips that would make excellent nominations if everybody hadn’t seen them already: Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, and Middle Ages Tech Support (depicting the confusion caused by that newfangled book technology).

But don’t let these guidelines and examples constrain your suggestions… go wild, and submit anything (multiple selections welcome) you think would enrich the festival. By all means add a bit of explanation justifying your choice if you wish.

Now let’s video party!

28 thoughts on “What’s your favorite (educational) online video? Nominations are open!

  1. Our first nomination! And what an awesome one it is. Hard to see how some zefrank doesn’t make it to the final program, and this has a legit educational angle.

    Oook has a nice post up about the impending end of the show with zefrank:

    http://oook.info/mt/archives/000558.html

    I’m going to re-edit my post to make it clearer that submissions do NOT need to be YouTube, just online.

  2. Today’s episode (only 3 more to go 🙁 is 100% SportsRacer submissions thanking Ze for TheShow. I am verklempt, in a totally non-sarcastic way. Can we do multiple submissions, this is fun!

  3. OK dude, if you weren’t such a dude and recovering from pneumonia I’d be getting a bit annoyed by now. But I’m not re-editing again — I’ve already written that you can submit as many times as you want.

    Please do submit more, I’m counting on ya. And don’t submit anything to the other jurors, as they are out to destroy me. I feel very alone and vulnerable right now, and I need my friends.

  4. So, the music wasn’t a contest, but the videos are, eh? I haven’t even got out of the gate yet, and you’re off and running. Damn! Here’s a submission for you:)

  5. I love this idea. It’s actually kind of funny because I was mentioning to some other folks in DTLT the other day that I’d like to set up some kind of station at our Faculty Academy this year and just play cool, compelling online videos that we’ve been coming across.

    Can we use your final “program?”

  6. All of the TED talks are fascinating but the best are Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Amy Smith, Ross Lovegrove, Malcom Gladwell …

    Oh, just set aside a couple of days to watch them all.
    They’re creative commons licensed too!

    My bright idea yesterday was to start a wiki for creating ESL/EFL support materials for them. Haven’t done it yet but it’s the work of a moment if others are interested.

    http://ted.com/tedtalks/

  7. Ah Jimmy, you’re a boy, make a big noise, playin’ in the street gonna be a big man some day. I don’t see this as a contest, but as a desperate race against time with my very survival at stake.

    Martha, hopefully the final program will live up to the promise of the concept. We’ll be making everything publicly available and reuse is exciting — but please keep contributing all you DTLTers (even if to one of your UMW peers).

    Yuval — thanks for the tip, it looks like we have a technology evaluation to do now!

    Sue — Those OTIS videos are great! Cool to have stuff like this out there. Thanks.

    Michael — those TED talks are yummy, at least one of those should be on the program. ANd nifty idea on the ESL/EFL materials!

    Leigh, I think you meant to link here: http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/the-web-20-online-learning-film-festival/

    Thanks so much! And to address the points your post, I hope to embody a bit of 2.0 organizational structure. I’ve never remixed, but time and technology willing might take a crack at it. And we may push the IP wall a bit.

  8. Woops, sorry Blamb – I was too excited to put that list together and wasn’t concentrating when I dropped the link. Thanks for the backup comment. I really love the idea and can’t wait to see what comes of it… I’ll be sure to set up a film festival here, and screen your compilation.. maybe you guys will skypecast in and present the movies?

  9. Leigh — All your pics were great. The Prelinger parody/remix zombie vid definitely meets the awesome criterion, but its big liability is its length. Assembling a program is going to be even harder than I thought.

    We haven’t quite decided how to do the public post-conference component yet. I think it will depend on how well things go… I look forward to seeing your festival!

  10. I’ve been spreading my votes out among y’all- here is a new one of a psuedo faux documentary of one man’s loss of his first life for a second one:

    And hardly “educational” but one you pointed my way as an prime example of the mash-up, Monty Trek:

  11. Hey Brian – great project!

    Not sure if you’re still looking for nominations – but would like to suggest Fast Food Freestyle:

    Hope this is not too left brain – but its kind of a Matrix like mixup between reality and digital futures mixing genre’s, cultures, and Fast Food pranks. I wonder who is taking the order?

    What about a newbie tutorial on Web 2.0 mashups for educators on WikiEducator? I’d be keen to play around with the idea.

  12. My favorite (so far) is “A Girl Like Me”. It can be viewed on YouTube, and on Google Video. It can also be viewed a the Media That Matters Film Festival 6 website.

  13. Leigh — we are using a wiki as our presentation space, and will share the URL soon — we’re still cleaning it up. (D’Arcy already leaked it if you can’t wait.)

    S. and Miss Profe — great picks, in under the wire!

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