I cannot lie, whenever I hear the
word YouTube, all I think about is pointless animal videos and senseless videos
from bored teenagers. I never go on
YouTube and delete any links that my friends send me to watch something on
it. They always say something along the
lines of, “You have to watch this clip!
Can you believe someone was stupid enough to do this?” That right there just puts me off even
more. It does not help either when my
husband shoves the computer in my face and makes me watch endless, ‘unbelievable’
football passes/catches from past NFL games.
With much reluctance, I started
exploring YouTube. Indeed, I did find
countless meaningless videos, but then I also started to see some videos that
had some significance. The more I
explored, the better I felt about the website.
There are actually quite a few impressive videos. Could it be that I was wrong about YouTube? Well, yes and no. I spent about two hours combing through the
website and found it to be an extremely useful resource for education. I can see using videos from YouTube to
enhance traditional lessons and revive boing lectures. If integrated properly, it can help redefine
the way educators teach and students learn.
Incorporating media can help students connect with the topics in ways
that are more meaningful. Children today
already use this technology and constantly have access to it, so it would
behoove educators to merge it with traditional teaching. Teachers can use YouTube during instruction
to highlight certain features of a lesson, they can assign videos for supplemental
review of material, or they can even have their students create their own
videos as a project.
As a side note, I also found two
other sites that are similar to YouTube, but are specific to education. The first is called TeacherTube. It is a video file-sharing website where
educators can post and share lesson plans, exchange teaching tips, give helpful
suggestions, and present instructional videos over popular topics in
education. The second website I found is
called SchoolTube. This is also a video
file-sharing website, but is catered more to students. Here students can post their media projects
and educational school events. The nice
thing is that before the material can be posted, it has to be approved by a
teacher who is registered on the website.
This ensures that the content is appropriate and meaningful. I will put the links at the bottom of this
post.
Since I am concentrating on elementary
school, I searched the site for videos on volcanoes. I was pleasantly surprised when a number of
videos popped up. I clicked on a few,
but found that many were not applicable to education. The videos were either silly, poorly made, or
not relevant. Before I was about to
abandon my search in lieu of something else, I changed my parameters to
‘volcanoes +education’. The results from
this search were so much better. I found
an amazing video by Bill Nye the Science Guy.
(For those of you who are not familiar with Bill Nye, he is a scientist
who presents science topics in fun, yet educational ways that are interesting
to children. My two kids think he is
great. His show is produced by Disney
and it is one of the few shows that my kids are allowed to watch and really
look forward to it. They are learning
about science, but do not realize it.
Anyway, this particular video about volcanoes would be perfect to show
in the classroom.) It presents the
science behind volcanoes in a very kid-friendly way, and is directed
specifically at the elementary school level.
Bill Nye uses humor, great graphics, sound effects, music, and
supplemental video clips to enhance his lesson.
He takes kids all around the world to see different volcanoes. Through the use of props and experiments that
kids can easily reproduce at home, he shows how volcanoes are formed, how they
develop, and how they explode. The best
part is you can actually eat the experiment at the end because it is made out
of food! Billy Nye certainly makes learning
and education fun and exciting. If I
were a student watching productions like this one, I would be very interested
in science.
After spending time on YouTube, I can
definitely see the benefits of using it in education. Yes, there will always be inane videos from
bored teenagers, but there are also numerous videos that have real depth and
significance. It will just take some
time and patience to uncover the ones that are applicable to education and can
be incorporated in a meaningful way.
Teacher Tube website: www.teachertube.com
School Tube website: www.schooltube.com
Bill Nye’s volcano video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M5JQDdardM
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