Top Ten YouTube Videos for the Classroom

Tara Seale has compiled a nice list of the Top Ten YouTube Videos for the Classroom over at her Enhanced English Teacher blog. If you're a middle or high school English teacher, you'll find some great resources and insights there.

For example, those of you who have had the immense pleasure of attending my Teaching that Sticks workshop or my How to Teach a Novel workshop have heard me mention Joseph Campbell's "Hero Myth." The clip below features a discussion of the Hero Myth as it appears in The Matrix. Christopher Vogler, author of The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writersand Using Myth to Power Your Story takes over where Joseph Campbell left off. This snippet of video serves to set up this topic up for classroom discussion.



Thanks for the list, Tara! Visit her site and give her some suggestions for building it to a Top Twenty!

(Missed my How to Teach a Novel workshop? Visit my How to Teach a Novel lens over at Squidoo.com for an abreviated run-down).

Edu TechieGal

Edu TechieGal (I think I got the caps and spacing correct on that) is a once-a-week dose of cool tech tools for teachers. Now, I know that there are dozens of tech blogs out there (feel free to email me your favorites), but I found Edu TechieGal to be extremely simple, focused, and truly geared toward classroom users, at all grade levels. Plus, she doesn't go into too much detail about the sites; gives you just enough to whet your appetite, pats you on the head and says, "All, right now, off you go."

Some of my favorites from her site: Literactive, a colorful and friendly little site for the preschool and kindergarten crowd, Be Funky, a super-simple photo effects site, Tenement Museum (pictured on the right), a really cool interactive immigrant experience site (where the heck was this when my daughter and I were doing that Ellis Island project two months ago?), and Word Ahead, a collection of vocabulary video flashcards, perfect for students hoping to cram vocab in preparation for SATs and other standardized tests.

So check out her site, give her a word of encouragement, and definitely forward some links to other tech sites of interest to teachers.