Week 4

This Weeks Class Question - "What are your thoughts and feelings about both using video from You Tube in the classroom and the ability for students to post their own content on You Tube?"

I feel digital video, such as videos being placed on YouTube are questionable if used for educational purposes. YouTube itself does contain video that can be educational and useful for classroom use, but also contains various other content that has little or no connection to education. Since anyone can create and post material on YouTube, the validity can also come into question. Other websites such as TeacherTube as mentioned in the previous posting are far more appropriate to use in a classroom lesson or other educational uses. Thought YouTube is monitored for inappropriate content, such as sexual content or extreme violence, there is still potentially harmful material on YouTube.

Students also have the power to to record on devices such as cell phones and post the videos on YouTube and other websites. This ability to create video with the flip of a phone gives a lot of power to a child with this technology, and like any power, it can be used for good and bad reasons. A student in a classroom can use a cell phone to record a teacher yelling at his/her students at the top of his lungs or a kid being hassled by a violent yelling cop. Both of these cases have happened more than once. In some cases if things like these get involved with court cases, the video can be used for valid evidence.

The biggest problem with this power to create video as a angrily yelling teacher or another individual is sometimes determined when the student turned on the camera or if he/she edited or removed pieces of the video. A video may show an angry teacher, but not show the cause of the outburst that may justify the teacher's actions. The video, nonetheless, could still be used by a student to defame a teacher and can even causes a teacher his/her job.