Jul 16 2007
The YouTube Dilemma
After reading quite a few of the articles on this topic, I am still having a dilemma about YouTube. We block this type of website in our district and I had difficulty with one teacher emailing the rest of the teachers in the district about how to get around the issue by giving directions on how to do it at home, burn it to a cd/dvd and then bring it to school to show. What message is that sending to the students?
When I went to the hackszine website it just brought this issue glaring back in my face. If teachers use sites like this, is it demonstrating responsible use or is it sending the old 60’s slogan “Question Authority”?
I think above all we must set an example for our students as far as modeling good netizen behavior. If we, as educators, feel there is an appropriate educational use for sites such as YouTube then we need to model how we can go about changing administrators’ opinions on this subject. That too is a lesson for students.
Now having said all of this I have seen, first hand some appropriate uses for sites such as YouTube. The article YouTube in the Classroom-Using YouTube Videos in the ESL Classroom brought the point to a very personal level. Everything the article mentions I have seen used for a second language except not in English but in German. My daughter has been studying in Germany this summer and her teacher showed a YouTube video called We’re Germans which uses both English and German and helped the students understand German and the modern culture. The students (college aged) really connected with it and it helped them in their studies.
Tapping Into the Wild gave some great appropriate uses of using video as a tool for instruction. Then if you post to a site like YouTube there are lots of critics out there and even if you post internally it gives students the opportunity to create something they are learning about in a visual way.
Overall, my biggest concerns are copyright issues and appropriateness of the material for the age groups.
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Debbie,
I’m really divided on this issue more than I thought I would be. I have no problem with it being blocked per se, due to the fact that I do think there are too many inappropriate items on it for my (or other) students at this time. I would like to be able to harness the use of some of the valuable resources, especially at the upper levels. I still think we can use the technology being posted on YouTube for the benefit of the students. We can teach about copyright issues through making the videos, even if we can’t upload at school. We can use the news to help students critically look at the issues. Lets harness the visual aspect as best we can. Tough issues.
Donna