It’s not just me
Some reasons to unblock Youtube:
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Free. Purchasing school videos is an expensive business. Channel 4learning is one of the better resources.
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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.
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Being short means you are straight in to the relevant concept, no long-winded introductions.
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Videos can be critiqued and rated, although the language can be a little choice.
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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.
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Sharing of resources. Favourites can be saved online using del.icio.us tagged for future referencing and sharing with colleagues.
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No valuable storage-space required, as would be the case with tapes or DVDs.
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The collection is extensive, and only getting bigger.
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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.
- 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.
- 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
