Two new and intriguing collaborative web tools
posted in Computer-supported Collaborative Learning, Resources for Teaching, Cool Sites |Mojiti.com and Ning.com
Mojiti.com is a useful tool for those of us who need to annotate video clips. You can either upload your own video to Mojiti or link to another video online (perhaps stored over at youtube.com or video.google.com) and add your own text and graphics as a layer on top of the video. As your video plays back, your subtitles, or comments, or graphics appear and disappear. Here are some ideas for the music classroom:
- Post a video of your rehearsal and invite your students to create their own overlay/spot organizer adding comments about the rehearsal
- In music education methods courses and student teaching supervision, videos of student teaching could be uploaded to Mojiti and both the student and the teacher could provide embedded comments right at the spot in the video where the comment was relevant. I have started having my student teachers upload their video and add their comments before I watch and give my own.
- In a technology-infused music class, you could ask your students who were creating original soundtracks to video clips or creating multimedia projects involving video to add their own directors/composers commentary layer describing the processes they used as well as their expressive intent.
Click here to see Mojiti in action.
Ning.com (special thanks to Steve Bizub for showing me this site) is a free social networking site that you can set up for your music classes. It enables you to create a collaborative web site for your classroom similar to myspace.com or facebook.com while keeping everything private. Students can create their own profiles and blogs, as well as upload photos and videos. One feature they plan on announcing soon is the ability to upload streaming audio files which would be perfect for a music class. Not only will you as teacher be able to upload audio files, but the students will as well… all within a private, password-protected space.
