Youtube the leader in online video, allows students and teachers to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email which in turn can be used by educators to supplement the curriculum and by students to share their creative multimedia projects. In the ever changing classroom, Youtube is a link see other students work and ltap into additional recourses to support projects and share knowledge with a much larger audience of other students and teachers. Rather than have a student submit a paper and pencil project, Youtube allows the student to express him or herself more creatively using text, narration, sound, animation, video, and graphics. Today’s students are connected through social learning in the read write web, and learn differently than students from previous generations. Youtube is a tool which can effectively reach students in a way in which these digital natives can understand and enjoy.
Technology and Web 2.0 has made the world a much "smaller" place in terms of the ability of communicating and sharing knowledge. Youtube allows students to share their knowledge of a specifice topic to a worldwide audience. It also allows students to become journalists in a sense, since they can post content on issues that directly effect their lives. Youtube has changed the way the world receives and shares information. The first videos of the damage the Tsunami caused in the Phillipines did not come from a world news organization, it came from people on the scene who posted the content they obtained on the Web. Since the world outside of the classroom is changing the way people interact with one another and share information due to Youtube and other Web 2.0 tools, these tools should be embraced in education if teachers are truly preparing students with skills to compete in the "real-world." Some students are still being taught as if it is 1970, and without the proper understanding of technology, they will not be prepared for the world in the 21st century.
In the February Edition of "the Chronicle of Education" the author says:
"The modern university should work not by defining fields of study but by removing obstacles so that knowledge can circulate and be reconfigured in new ways. For media studies, that means taking down walls that separate the study of different media, that block off full collaboration between students, that make it difficult to combine theory and practice, and that isolate academic research from the larger public conversations about media change.
The way we educate our students should resemble this statement, from University level through Kindergarten. No longer can students be forced to accept that the teacher in the classroom is the only expert on a topic. By allowing students to create their own content and show their understanding of a topic through multimedia presentations, posting that content on the internet, and getting feedback from people all over the world - it would give students a much richer experience in the classroom and the ability to see other points of view on how other students translate information into knowledge.
In addition to allowing students to create and share content, teachers can access videos from all spectrums of the curriculum to use in class. If a teacher is doing a history lesson on the assassination of JFK, wouldn't it be helpful to see the video in the classroom. Here is a great example of a student project about JFK. What if students were learning about the speeches of Martin Luther King, wouldn't it be an effective tool to actually see and hear MLK standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial?
Youtube screens and edits innaporpriate content but for teachers who are still nervous about Youtube and do not trust the content on the site, there are other options: TeacherTube and Schooltube. Schooltube is a video sharing site just like Youtube, but it is run by the Student Television Network, a nationally recognized organization overseeing Student Broadcasting across the country. Teachertube is an online community for sharing instructional videos. Both of these Web 2.0 tools should allow for even most "digital immigrants" to implement some sort of video and multimedia technology in the classroom. The possibilities are endless and can be applied to all content areas and curriculums as a means to share ideas rather than just teach them.
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