YouTube Comes to the Classroom

By Anna Adam and Helen Mowers -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2007

Much to the dismay of school administrators everywhere, YouTube is not going away. The popular, free video-sharing site has taken the online world by storm, and with it, many of our students, who are posting videos about anything and nothing all at the same time. So what’s all the fuss? Take a look at the YouTube home page on any given day and you’ll find “featured videos” that have received over 1,000,000 views. It’s very clear—kids want a voice. They have an inherent desire to be heard and this site gives them that opportunity. Now we can stick our heads in the sand and ignore YouTube, or we can use it to motivate students.

YouTube provides a platform for students to be content creators, not just content viewers. Just knowing that someone out there is listening is enough motivation for them to speak out. It is our job to help students discover their voice. While YouTube does contain inappropriate material, it also offers real gems for educators.

So just where are the educational nuggets on YouTube? Start with the site’s K12 education group. Here, in a safe area for posting and searching, you’ll find teacher- and student-submitted videos, including a piece on using blogs, wikis, and other social media in the classroom. As of this writing, there are 53 videos, but the list is sure to grow.

In addition to the K12 users group, creative keyword searches retrieve even more treasures. Entering “time lapse,” for example, brings you videos of flowers blooming and ice melting. While neither video is particularly exciting on its own, they can certainly help jump-start conversations about life cycles in nature. A search for “WW2” introduced us to the oldest YouTube contributor we’ve seen, a 94-year-old veteran relating his firsthand experiences of a battle long past. Imagine the potential impact such a presentation would have on students. Then there are the Dove “real beauty” ads (pictured at right), which convey in a very graphic way the issues of self-image and the manipulative power of advertising (youtube.com/watch?v=NMxxelZHs8Y, youtube.com/watch?v=gUsKIApTewQ, www.youtube.comwatch?v=Li3mg1GrKe0).

To discourage the viewing of inappropriate video content, Net-savvy educators can embed a selected YouTube video within a blog or Web page. This won’t work, however, if your district has banned YouTube, and it doesn’t prevent students from clicking on the embedded video and going straight to YouTube’s inviting and unsafe arms.

An alternative to linking directly to YouTube videos is to convert the video to another format. For PC users, the Web site KeepVID allows you to enter a YouTube URL and then download a Flash file of that movie. A link from their site also provides you with a free player for those Flash files. There are similar software applications for Mac users, such as iSquint, which is free, but with limited file format options. Another Mac app VisualHub, is $23 to download, but has more options. TubeSock, another tool to rip videos from YouTube is a steal at $15.

YouTube can be a valuable resource and is just one more example of the potential of Web 2.0 tools, which, in the hands of enlightened educators, can inspire students and support their digital learning style. Youngsters will always want a voice—it’s up to us to utilize available resources, such as YouTube, to help our students create content that is relevant and engaging.