Blog #2 - Video sharing sites

“The Devil doesn't even torture the souls of the damned anymore, he just sits around watching funny YouTube videos all day.”

– retrieved from Wikiquotes, quoted from Questionable Content , a webcomic written and drawn by Jeph Jacques (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Questionable_Content)



My mission was to explore video sharing sites to learn more about them and determine how they could be utilized in educational capacities. I followed the Trailfire to the Wikipedia entry on YouTube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube). The first surprise I received was realizing that YouTube only started 3 ½ years ago. Holy cats, it sure didn’t take long for it to become a phenomenon. My impression of YouTube to date has been that it was wonderful place if you want to catch a funny bit from some television show you missed, see a music video that never seems to show up on the tube, or watch some amateur video silliness. Of course, the Wikipedia entry also informs readers potential that YouTube uploaders are told:

Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts or commercials without permission unless they consist entirely of content you created yourself. The Copyright Tips page and the Community Guidelines can help you determine whether your video infringes someone else's copyright.

It is clear that many YouTube users are simply ignoring the warning. People are quickly and easily uploading just about anything they want to show or see with very little, if any, thought given to copyright or property law. It may be that Web addicts are cheering a form of popular “ownership” wherin uploaders do what they want. I have heard that YouTube administrators will remove content that is deemed obscene or an obvious copyright infringement, but the sheer volume of content makes speedy improper video removal difficult. So improper or inappropriate content may invariably be a part of YouTube unless some drastic changes are made (such as making the ease of uploading much more rigourous, demanding proof of ownership, and so on).
The end result is YouTube’s content is seemingly only semi-regulated.

From an educational standpoint, teachers and students in some areas are unable to access YouTube from their school. My school division disallows entry, and I cannot unblock the site even for isolated teachable moments or mini-lessons. Of course, this also means that students who sneakily make a video of an angry teacher in class can’t share the joke in a computer lab.

At the same time, there are certainly people out there who are using YouTube for more than entertainment purposes. The next Trailfire link I followed sent me to 100 Awesome YouTube Vids for Librarians, which is a place where you can find technical, practical, and of course silly videos. Having checked out a few of the videos, I will testify that not all of the videos will be deemed awesome by everyone; when I looked at the video descriptions of the two you can watch below, I thought I was going to learn something quite different than I did. Here’s the description of the first one (which I thought would extol the virtues and different uses of different Web 2.0 tools):

Web 2.0 Tools in Libraries 2.0 — Which Ones are You Using?: This video encourages librarians to make use of MySpace and other 2.0 tools. Send in your feedback to participate in the discussion.

And here’s the video you will find if you follow the link:



The description of another video led me to believe that I would learn something ultra-important about blogging. The description reads:

Henry Madden Library, Library 2.0: Librarians who want to experiment with blogging should watch this video.

And here’s the video:



As a person who is not a librarian at this point, I did not get a lot out of this site, but some of the videos may be more useful to me in the future.

The next trailfire link zoomed me over to An anthropological introduction to YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU ). I was immediately struck by the fact that the video of a young man lip-syncing to a goofy song is one that I watched (more than once!) a long time ago. As with the “Did You Know”, (watch below)



and “Web 2.0 - The Machine is Us/ing Us” (see my previous blog) videos, there seems to be a growing body of visual/and or audio clips that I’m seeing referenced on numerous sites, in school staff meetings, and so on. The concept of a sharing community and being connected via the use of video from or on the Web as I look outward is also making me look inward, as well as at the people around me who are ingesting many of the same images, sounds, and ideas (hello, fellow bloggers/lurkers!). Some writers have suggested that we are reaching or have reached a state of hyperconnectivity that may not always be positive. (See http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/ for a lengthy further discussion on this topic.) I am not seeing that problem of hyperconnectivity as a problem for myself yet; I am just starting to get excited about the idea of learning and sharing “alongside” others all over our globe.

To get back to An anthropological introduction to YouTube, one of the points made by Michael Wesch about increased commercialism and increased individuality struck a chord with me. The idea of increased commercialism automatically made me think of TeacherTube, which has so many intrusive ads I was often distracted when trying to explore the site’s possible uses. Having an advertisement overlapping the bottom quarter of a video I was trying to evaluate was annoying and perplexing until I saw that you could remove it. One version of increased individuality can be seen in the number of videos on YouTube that copy, imitate, or pay homage to something else. The Free Hugs phenomenon and the Charlie Bit My Finger Again copycats shown by Wesch in his aforementioned introduction to YouTube are a couple of examples. In my search for possible educational uses for YouTube and TeacherTube, I focused on videos that tagged Shakespeare and MacBeth. There are numerous videos that could serve as an introduction to Shakespeare, an inspiration for students looking to se how they could update an act from Macbeth, and various videos that could help learners gather some background information about the Bard's life and times. If you have long class periods, the brevity of most videos means that a teacher could potentially break up a lesson with one, go back to instructing, show another one, and so on. I found Lego re-enactions of acts from Macbeth, Star Wars-like versions of the play, newly created endings, and many modern day interpretations. In fact, I found so many I haven’t had the time to view them all; I need an assistant to rate them all for me (I can’t pay, but I will share my educational richness, which is growing each day). However, I can see how TeacherTube can fit into Richardson’s idea of FOAFs connecting and sharing ideas, resources and passions. But perhaps some of the readers of this blog can tell me: How many of you would be comfortable with using use the video below in a classroom near you? How many of you would not be allowed to do so?



At this point, I can’t access video sharing sites from my school, and I find myself thinking of ways to get around that problem. Of course, I can’t (and don’t want to) do that if it goes against the intent of the school division’s policy that restricts those sites. I need to have further conversations with other educators in my division.

Whew! My blogging fingers are burning (but maybe the Trailfire is to blame). I’ll leave you with a quote from Will Richardson that I believe to be really thought-provoking:

"I say this all the time, but I truly believe that filters make our kids less safe. They step off the bus into unfiltered worlds with no context for making good decisions about the stuff coming at them. It’s a huge problem. But on some levels, the bigger problem is what we are doing to our teachers. It insults the profession to not at the very least provide desktop overrides for teachers when they bump up against a filtered site." – Will Richardson, on his blog from September 27 (see http://weblogg-ed.com/2007/my-flickr-conundrum/ from http://weblogg-ed.com/ )