What could educators do with a Flip Video Camera?

Not really a post as much as an idea from a tweet.
isteconnects Digital Wish is offering 2 for 1 Flip Ultra camcorders for your classroom! Cool deal w/no catch. Info here: http://bit.ly/6xSiA

Giving credit where credit is due...Let's get 10 ideas from across the pond.

Taking to another level, the easy starting point is letting the kids tape themselves in class. However, taping yourself is not as revealing as seeing others in new and interesting ways.

Put the kid reporters to work. I know an elementary school that does a newscast in the mornings. They limit their stories to the studio. Let those kids go find stories in assemblies, trips, after school/community sports, science & technology fairs, and anywhere else they normally go.

How about a video pen pal program? Teacher--send your video camera to a friend teacher that works in another school, town, state, or country. It should have some interesting facts about your class and the things you like to do. That teacher can share the information with his/her class. They can do a similar thing and send it back for your class to see.

Bring the business partners to the school level. Many public schools seem to have challenges attracting good business partners. It should not always be about the money. The school can use vide to show what gaps additional products and services can fill. The video could almost be an add on to the school's strategic plan. On the other side, a business partner could be interviewed by a student. This helps the school community understand what the partner does for the school and why they contribute. It would not hurt to let them do a little pitch for their business as well.

One take away that I would like you to get your hands around...how many of these things were even possible (at a reasonable cost) when you were in school? It's a different world; let the kids prepare to be productive in it!

Finally, here are more ideas that come from Mark Belinsky and Tom Barrett.

Forty Interesting Ways* to use your Pocket Video Camera in the Classroom

View more presentations from Mark Belinsky.

Teacher Communications

I am interested in the happenings at my child's school. This is particularly true of the classroom activities. We get paper updates about once a week and grade level updates about once a month. I want better, more modern communications.

The school has a website, but it really doesn't communicate much current, dynamic information. The likely method of communication is multi colored tree killer piles of paper on Thursdays. Twitter has Follow Fridays and the school has Tree Trunk Thursday. Interestingly, in this era of tightening school budgets, we still have not made better progress with free communications.

Here's my suggestion. Each teacher should have a page on the website and a school approved twitter account. The webpage should be simple enough to let parents know what the teacher thinks is important. It could be a combination of pictures, assignment & activity dates and class highlights. You can omit pictures of the students for security, but the basics of what the teacher would want the students' families to know would go up on the page as soon as the teacher chooses. This eliminates the long lag for any good things that happen the day after the weekly push of printed material. One way for teachers to do this without cost would be to use a blog. In the case of educators, they might try Edublogs. Another option would be to get the students involved and start a wiki. You can expand your page to include multi media, but for now it is sufficient to recognize it as a great way to communicate with the extended school family.

Once the teachers have a method of putting their information into a webpage or blog, the next step is sharing that information with the parents. Twitter is an easy way to do it. When the teacher updates the webpage/blog, they send a tweet. This would alert all the followers to check the page. The followers should be the student families. It could also include peer teachers and interested administrators. Here is an example of a school district twitter feed.

There are several upsides. There is less paper purchased and used. This is another step to save the planet and teach the kids about options that are environmentally friendly. The school website becomes more useful once it includes the active teacher pages. There should be an increase in traffic which may allow them to better monetize the website. This increased traffic could also make it easier to recruit business partner advertising.

The burden on those that want to keep up with student information is small. It can be done via computer (at home, work or a free one in the library) or your mobile phone by receiving text messages. If you want to print the information, you can.

Twitter is now on the menu

Earlier this year, there was a Why I Don't Twitter post.

All of those facts are still valid for me. However, I have discovered that there is an entire business opportunity that aligns well with social media.

Without sending a single tweet, you can find all sorts of information, including coupons, special deals, customer service, and professional tools.

For me, Twitter is not about the question, What are you doing, but it is about the question What do you know that might be useful to me.

As you will see in the near future, it also allows me to blog more often. Twitter helps with one of my basic business rules. You have to meet people where they are. The younger, more technologically adept customer is hanging out in social networks.

Twitter is definitely a part of my evolving Technology Action Plan (TAP)

Healthcare in small chunks, part 3

How are WE paying for healthcare?

Some of the terms below (red plan, green plan) originated earlier in this series of healthcare posts. If you are not familiar, just jump back and check them out.

I could go uber policy wonk and dive into the federeal budget. But let's be real, the average person does not want that level of detail. Here's an extremely short version of health care cost savings from the White House. You can determine how much you believe the numbers and your interest level. Consequently, I wanted to think about funding health care in simpler terms. It's about money from inside the system and outside the system.

Inside money comes from cost savings based on things that we do within the healthcare system. If you used to buy a medicine for $3/pill and you now get it for $2/pill, there is a $1/pill cost savings. You multiply that by the number of these pills used in a year and that is your annual cost savings. The trick is to only count the real cost savings and not the fake ones. A fake one would be a savings of $1 per interoffice call if the price of the call truly stays inside of the hospital. If the cost savings does not show in a reduced cost from the phone company that provides the service, it is a false savings.

There is a lot of money to be saved inside the system. While I prefer that the government stay out of competitive, private industry things, when they do get involved, the Feds MUST get cost savings inside of the healthcare system based on the large quantities they control. This is true for medicines, medical tests, and all sorts of activities that support the basic (previously called red level plan) healthcare. The same is true for all of the current medicare & medicaid level healthcare.

Here is an example of how that inside savings can work for private companies. I need a medical test and for some reason get a 2nd opinion. Let's use the same information when possible instead of running the tests again. If the test are run again, let's have a follow up step to determine the value of the additional testing. If it is a low value test, the reimbursement for that testing is split--some to the testing organization and most to the red level fund. Now wasted tests are helping to pay for basic levels of healthcare. Either the testing becomes more efficient and effective or it helps to fund healthcare for those that cannot afford it. Either way, the system gets better.

One other area that could save money and improve healthcare in the long run is centralized patient information. Instead of relying on the memory of a sick person, let's put all of that healthcare information in a centralized place where medical professionals can access it. We would save money on record keeping. The severe downside is privacy and how the information might get (mis)used. If you want an extreme example, see the movie, Gattaca. You could let people opt out of the system, but they would be responsible for the storage, cost, and accuracy of their own records. No chance to sue the doctor who got the wrong medical information from you.

On the public side, few if any people want to pay more taxes. In reality, the people that have the most resources are probably least in need of healthcare reform. It is politically unpopular to put the burden of healthcare expenses on people with fewer funds. We often turn away from the fact that it is easier to get $1 from the average family than it is to get $1 million dollars from a rich person. There are only so many rich people to go around. How do we balance these concerns for a shared sacrifice? I'd suggest a combination of a consumption tax that impacts everyone and a tax on the high end (green level plan) medical services that are more optional than necessary.

That's my 2 cents on paying for healthcare. Is it enough to make change? Ask your congressperson and senators--soon.