Mike Wesch recently put out a call asking for “2 minute video[s] showing us scenes of what you see in your everyday life during your most critical learning moments.” Crowdsourcing video is a powerful strategy to gather authentic and interesting data from a wide range of contributors, and the contributions that Dr. Wesch has received so far demonstrate this point clearly.

I used this call to develop the first 30-minute “in-class” activity my students engaged with in my Spring 2011 course entitled “Online Learning in the Participatory Age.” This video contributes to the project described above, but also serves as our first contribution to participatory cultures (with follow-up activities designed to understand the implications of online participation for individuals). Our discussions not only denoted critical learning moments, but, we believe, reveal the spectrum of learning that may exist between the new and the old, the formal and the informal, the traditional and the non-traditional. More importantly however, we tried to stay away from binaries and from elevating one form of learning over another, using the video as a jumping point for the Spring semester.

The video is posted here, and is also embedded below: