Thing 18 YouTube

I continue to be amazed at the number of web2.0 tools that have arrived, matured and entrenched themselves in just the last three years or so. I was shocked while watching the History of YouTube that the domain name had only been registered in the middle of 2005. If I'd been asked how long YouTube has been around I would have guessed many more years than this.

You can find videos on literally any topic when searching YouTube. The "How To" videos I was searching for had to do with specific software applications. As an example if I needed some help learning to use iMovie 08 a simple search for "How to use iMovie 08" presented me with several thousand videos. As with everything you must filter because some of the videos are of high quality and some - not so much. It would be feasible for a teacher to find then link to or embed videos they were wanting their students to view.

I'm not sure how many employees are aware that our Electronic Media Services creates videos of all sorts for internal uses but once delivered to the target audience posts them to YouTube. EMS also attempt to post their videos to TeacherTube but have not had a great deal of success posting to this service. I don't believe TeacherTube is quite as robust as YouTube which often causes their uploads to fail.

Take a look at this recent EMS creation about raising our TAKS scores. It's a hoot! It was shown in last weeks staff meeting to all principals and central office staff.



Another facinatieng developmet is the roll YouTube played in our recent election and the continued roll it may play in the new presidency. President-Elect Obama has pledged to post weekly fireside chats to YouTube. If he manages to pull this off we may experience a transparency of government we've never seen or experienced before. If I were a social studies teacher I would be watching these every week and when appropriate exposing my kids to the topics and discussions presented in the broadcasts. How cool would that be!