YouTube

What is YouTube ?

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005.[2] In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for US$1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google. From Wikipedia.

Who uses YouTube? You might be surprised, it's not just the 'geeky' nerds or girls lipsynching to songs in their underwear a lot of 'big names' use YouTube.

• The Vatican
• The Whitehouse
• UC Berkeley

YouTube for Education

Two most common ways of using YouTube in your classes - watching the videos and then creating and uploading videos.

Watching YouTube

There are many educational videos in YouTube that cover a range of topics but before you run off to YouTube and start picking out videos you need to keep a few things in mind:

'Just like any emerging technology tool, YouTube's value is not a given - it depends on how the teachers use the video content to support and advance learning. Herding a class of students down to the computer lab to watch a few catchy vidoes has no more learning benefit than turning a class of students onto the internet for a half hour of random surfing. The power of YouTube only is activated when the teacher has a clear idea of how a specific video clip can be used to introduce a concept or theme, instigate a discussion or serve as a writing promopt' this exerpt is from Brenda's Blog

'My main concern in using any of these video-sharing sites is that what makes it so powerful is also what makes it a tricky tool to use with ease. There are great discussions and commentary on many of the video clips, but those discussions are, for the most part, completely unfiltered and only mildly moderated. However, using and showing YouTube clips, then having your own classroom discussion about the clips, is an incredibly robust classroom approach. Working with students to create and upload their own videos is an even more powerful application' from Edutopia - Online Interactivity for Educators: A Teacher's Tour of YouTube

So we now know a few reasons why we might show a video in class:

• Introduce a concept or theme
• instigate a discussion
• serve as a writing prompt

Can you think of any other reasons? (whiteboard)

How does this fit in to Teaching and Learning ? In an article in Educator's eZine onBloom's Taxonomy - Blooms Digitally Andrew Churches explores another update to Bloom's Taxonomy - which addresses the new objectives presented by the emergence and integration of Information and Communication Technologies into the classrooms and the lives of our students. He has created a mindmap of the new digital taxonomy that contain new digital verbs in each of the taxonomic elements. Explore the digital mindmap and see which of the taxonomic elements 'YouTubing' may fit into.

Finding Educational Videos

YouTube EDU
TeacherTube
TEDSTalks inspired talks by the worlds leading thinkers and doers.

Examples of Videos

Business


Science



Art

The Artist's Guide to YouTube
CABK Artez Zwolle Channel


Music
Music for and by the YouTube Generation

Language

Sign Language - there is a large amount of videos on a range of topics done in sign language - here is one on RSS



Hospitality



or for more go to the Smart Teaching.org site and the article 100 Best YouTube Videos for Teachers or to Open Culture at openculture.com

Uploading a video to YouTube

The other way of using YouTube is to have groups/individual/classes creating videos and uploading them.

Pros

• Uses higher level thinking skills (see Blooms Digital Taxonomy)
• Interesting to students
• May be easier for some students to Video Blog rather than write

Cons

• Videos can be hard to make professionally - what standard are you looking for.
• Equipment
• Watch out for breach of copyright - using music etc
• Legalities around posting to 'everyone'
• Comments can be very rude and unfriendly - YouTube is not always a nice place
• Can widen the gap between those who have video skills and those who dont

Remember, first and foremost that YouTube is a social space.

Other Resources for creating videos

YouTube Toolbox - 100+ tools and Resources to Enhance Your Video Experience
where to Find Free Music for Your Videos and Podcasts: A Mini Guide


Copyright

Qa&A on using YouTube for Education
YouTube Community Guidelines

TeacherTube provides the ability to embed videos to your website/blog for personal or classroom educational use only, provided you give a link back to TeacherTube in any presentation, website, or other form of media in which the embedded video is included and give credit to the author of the video.


Embedding YouTube into WebCT (Blackboard)

Pick up the embed code (don't forget, some people choose to make this option unavailable, if there is no embed code then you will need to link).

copy and paste embed code from here

Go to WebCT (Blackboard) to where you want to embed the video (anywhere with a HTML creater - discussion, assignment etc)
Open the HTML Creator
Make sure you are in Source View (see below)

source code view (circled)

Paste the embed code in and then format around it.


Sum up

A last thought - I found this 'YouTuber' in my travels whilst doing research for this workshop. It's interesting to watch his evolution from his first video (video 1) post all the way through to him being interviewed on More4News (video 3) but I especially like his video 'You are not Alone' (video 2). I thought he was a good example of what some of 'today's generation' are using YouTube for.

Video 1 - Blade376



Video 2



Video 3