Common Craft, the brainchild of Lee LeFever, is a two person company that sells "explanation." They make short movies (around 3 minutes each) explaining concepts like RSS feeds and augmented reality, as well as websites like Wikipedia and Twitter. I have watched about 10 different Common Craft movies, and have found all of them to be informative and easy to understand. I have not found any errors.Common Craft movies should be used during the Explanation and Demonstration stages of the learning cycle (their website fittingly lists their slogan as "Our product is explanation"). The learning objectives vary depending on the movie. Many are explaining the basics features and how to use them (e.g. Twitter in Plain English). Since the movies are so short, learners can be completely new to a concept of website (Twitter, in our earlier example) or advanced. The new learners will feel confident that they at least have some kind of understanding after watching the movie. Advanced users will either pick something up that they can use, or nothing at all. Either way, it's only 3 minutes of their life.
In our Twitter example, users should know what Twitter is used for. They will know common uses of Twitter, and how to do basic features. If they have experience with Facebook or blogs, they can add Twitter to their own schema. Every Common Craft movie is a little different, but the Twitter example is fairly consistent with the norm.
Common Craft movies do a great job of introducing learners to a variety of topics. While it is free to view these movies from their website (with a watermark), it costs money to embed them into your website or LMS, or to download them to your computer. It can be as cheap as $20 per movie (for classroom use) or $350 (for a school or an entire school district).
While these movies can be very helpful for big ideas, they are not meant to replace teachers or textbooks. They are meant to introduce topics so learners all have a level playing field. They do not teach html, show the ins and outs of creating Facebook groups, or how to add a Calendar to your blog. They explain it pretty well in their own Common Craft movie about Common Craft.
Ease of Use
The website is fairly easy to navigate. I recommend clicking on the orange "Browse Videos" button near the top left corner of the homepage. From there, click on the "Browse Videos" button again. I know this seems repetitive, but it's the only way to get the helpful menu to pop up. It took me awhile to find this, but once I did, I was good.
Common Craft does not have a spot for users to rate the content. If a teacher or presenter shares a link to a specific movie, it is extremely easy to use. Just click play! Lee LeFever is the voice behind all of the movies. His voice is clear and easy to understand. The drawings are very neat and clean as well. Once you've viewed a couple movies, you'll be very familiar with the format.
Overall, I love Common Craft. I highly recommend it to anyone that needs a quick introduction to a concept or website. I recently found out that they also have some non-technology movies. Enjoy!
This does look like a great resource. It would help teachers and students learn about technology. Your explanation of the resource is very engaging and easy to read. You have sited some positives and a few not so positives. I will spend some time looking at it. I wonder if our school district would be willing to look at it. The price isn't very high at all. Thanks for sharing.
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