In a recent tech meeting, one of my colleagues refuted the instructional uses of YouTube (justification for unblocking access for students). Here’s a start on my list of uses (from teachers who would like kids to have access):
- Flipped teaching. Our teachers are creating videos to support flipped teaching, but hundreds of teachers are already sharing content, mostly on YouTube. It would add to the teacher library of useful videos and would also provide additional resources/perspectives for students.
- Review and remediation. Students would be able to interact with resources at their own pace, stopping, slowing down, and reviewing as needed – not something they’re likely to do in a large-class viewing situation.
- Language resources. Lots of cultural videos are available on YouTube as well as language-learning/practice videos. Music videos. Movie clips. Vocabulary.
- Research for projects. Frequently, students doing research (especially for social studies and history classes) encounter sites with YouTube videos embedded. Some of the content may be in text, but often the bulk of the content is in the blocked video.
- Independent study. Tons of content from valid educational organizations is available online – http://www.youtube.com/education. Khan Academy. PBS. MIT. Berkley. Stanford. Yale. Harvard. NASA. National Geographic. TED. Library of Congress.
It kind of feels like when we first started to use Internet in schools. People kept wondering what use it would be in the classroom, but over time more and more content appeared. Yes, one could argue the majority is still crap, but there’s more than enough to make it an educationally valid tool.
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