ISKME GoPro Learning Challenge: Education’s Digital Media Uprising

The capture and use of video was a rare activity for most of us until recently. Shooting video was reserved for momentous events, and was not widely considered a tool for everyday life and learning. Enter new tools like the GoPro Hero 4, the iPhone, and the Flip camera. Combined with easy-to-use editing software and resources, such as ISKME’s OER Commons, for posting and sharing video, we can use video anywhere and anytime to document and share our lives with the world.

At ISKME, we’re interested in how teachers can use digital media tools in the classroom. We’re finding that more and more, video is becoming not only a teaching tool but also a learning tool, opening up new opportunities for collecting data, sharing experiences, and for monitoring and reflecting on how learning happens.

The ISKME GoPro Learning Challenge is one way we’re supporting this work. We’re inviting educators to share their great ideas for how GoPro cameras can be used to create educational content. Three winners will be selected to receive two GoPro cameras to carry out their idea and share it with the world on OER Commons. One educator’s idea involves creating interviews with migrant workers to teach her students about immigration policy. Another plans to engage students in building labyrinths to teach mindfulness.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how I could incorporate video into my own learning processes, and wondered, if I were to participate in the ISKME GoPro Learning Challenge, what would I want to create? I looked back to the very first time I really started using video in my daily life, and, surprise surprise, it was to create a teaching tool for myself. This is going to be a little embarrassing, but that’s okay.

I’m a dancer, and for years I’d practiced dancing in my bedroom, sometimes in front of a mirror.  But I’d never recorded myself dancing. Once I did, I realized it could have a tremendous impact on my skill level as a dancer. Especially when preparing for a performance, the videos enabled me to see my weaknesses and memorize choreography more readily. So my great idea is to use GoPro to record myself and my fellow students as we learn new choreography, and to share those videos with each other and with our teacher so we can track and measure our progress, and receive personalized feedback. 

That’s just one idea for how video can be a teaching tool. What are yours? We look forward to receiving your submissions for the ISKME GoPro Learning Challenge by March 15, 2014! Please contact me at clare@iskme.org with any questions about participating in the challenge.