My take on digital media in the classroom, the next-gen lecturer, went ultra-viral last summer, tripling up on Did You Know?, and making Sir Ken Robinson wish he never paid attention to his YouTube stats, etc.

Responding to demand, I’d like to serialize the video into an ongoing series called What Can You Do With This?, the structure of which will go like this:

1. I will post a digital photo or some digital video. I will do this without elaboration.
2. We will take to the comments and angle ourselves at the best possible use of that media in a classroom setting, which use, I predict, will be superior to the one I originally imagined.

At the very least, we will find in these (high-res, DRM-free) media a better way to introduce material than whatever “real world” contrivance your textbook recommends. At best, we will train our eyes to find our content areas in the world around us, becoming better teachers in the process.

These digressions are becoming easier, more frequent. They induce less guilt than before. I feel decreasingly less like apologizing also because I find this stuff to be increasingly classroom vital.

If I taught any sort of English class, just for instance, I’d open my unit on [literary device redacted] with this commercial, one which kind of cut me off at the knees this evening by depicting a thoroughly unique existential crisis and by rendering [literary device again] perfectly, without breaking a sweat.

Which literary device am I thinking of? Which haven’t I thought of? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Related:

1. The Complaint Factor. Jan Borelli finds teaching in an in-flight magazine.
2. Everything Is Everything. Find teaching in your home.