It’s not just me

Some reasons to unblock Youtube:

1. Free. Purchasing school videos is an expensive business. Channel 4learning is one of the better resources.
2. Short. Lord knows students don’t have a great attention span, and Youtube’s policy of keeping videos to ten minutess or less works well.
3. Being short means you are straight in to the relevant concept, no long-winded introductions.
4. Videos can be critiqued and rated, although the language can be a little choice.
5. Easy access. No fast-forwarding or rewinding  to find the start, and no last minute realisation that your colleague is using the same DVD just when you need it most.
6. Sharing of resources. Favourites can be saved online using del.icio.us tagged for future referencing and sharing with colleagues.
7. No valuable storage-space required, as would be the case with tapes or DVDs.
8. The collection is extensive, and only getting bigger.
9. Many are both highly entertaining and educational – not like the old ‘Open University’ titles which were a turn-off to all but the most dedicated.
10. Safe. Youtube knows that its reputation is on the line and  as a result it is one of the most regulated video sites out there, although there are no absolute guarantees. 
11. Rewards. While the educationalists mightn’t appreciate this one, a promise of 5 minutes on Youtube if the rest of the class goes well is a very nice incentive for students.

For some strange reason the numbers appear correctly (10, 11 etc) when writing this, but not when it gets published. Strange . . .

Seaghan Moriarty has written recently about the negative reaction towards ICT in Irish education and cites an anticle which “. . . is a much more balanced view of social networking, and a welcome counter to the defensive and reactive positions heard from Irish education and media.”
Seaghan Moriarty: Pedablogy.com

He has also spotted a newspaper report of a school which is using Youtube constructively in their classrooms.
Youtube course is a class act

My del.ic.ious links are here