Web 2.0 and Video Sharing – Lead, follow or get out of the way

I’m really starting to feel like I am getting swept up in the digital revolution. With each new thing I learn, I realize how much more there IS to learn. As for video sharing sites, unless you have been living under a rock for the last three years, you have probably heard of, watched or uploaded to YouTube. I have found it entertaining (my husband is always sharing new and interesting videos from YouTube and other video sharing sites, such as Glumbert. As for me, I do enjoy the ease of use and the sheer number of videos available on YouTube. However, I was happy to come across the France-based video sharing site DailyMotion which was mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for YouTube (supplied by this week’s Trailfire). As a French immersion teacher, this has literally opened up a whole new world of French content for me. Not only are there videos in French and English, there are versions of this site in more than a dozen languages! I will definitely be passing this resource along to my Spanish-teaching colleagues. Perhaps what is the most useful for me at this moment in my profession are the current events and news clips as I will be starting my current events unit with my Français langue 9 students soon.

On-line tutorials – from this week’s trailfire, One Hundred Awesome YouTube Vids for Librarians is a fascinating and very useful resource. I wanted to watch them all! What really struck me is just how much we are going digital. A simple tutorial explaining plagiarism would have been a magazine article or an encyclopedia entry just a few years ago. A fun video to check out is What is Plagiarism. It’s hokey and funny in a nerdy way, but accessible to high school and undergraduate students. I have always taught specific lessons on how to avoid plagiarism, but often had difficulty showing students what it looked like. I believe that these tutorial videos clearly demonstrate to students how to write and report without plagiarizing. Another thought-provoking video is Web 2.0 saved us which tries to define who the Web 2.0 generation is and how it is changing their lives and ours.



I am impressed by the fact that Teacher tube encourages its users to flag inappropriate sites. I am starting to grasp the concept of community that is out there on the web. I used to think that it was just one big free for all. However, with so many users keeping an eye on things, it is almost like there are built-in social mechanisms to regulate behaviour. One great resource that I found on Teacher Tube earlier this year was a video to Billy Joel’s song, We didn’t Start the Fire It was an excellent resource to teach kids about the Cold War and the baby boomer generation. Since starting this course, I have also begun to up the technology ante in the classroom by offering students more options to present material for projects or oral presentations. My grade 11 Social Studies students are studying government and have just completed projects on major political parties. Check out my students’ video on the BC Liberals which they uploaded to YouTube.

Another amazing tool that my TL introduced to the staff last year is Voicethread which is an online tool that enables users to talk about and share images, documents and videos. One of my other student groups used it for their political party presentation.

Throughout my on-line searches this week, I kept coming back to the same question: “Is one video sharing site better than the others?” YouTube certainly has the best name recognition, but I was interested to learn that it is not in fact, the video-sharing site with the most traffic. According to the blog, Friday Traffic Report, YouTube ranks fourth behind Google Video, BrightCove and PhotoBucket as video sites with the most traffic. Then, I stumbled across a meta-search engine for videos. VDOOGLE is worth a look as it allows users to search for videos from multiple sites.

The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration , mentioned in the Hasselbach article, Take a field trip without leaving the classroom: Museums, zoos and interactive videoconferencing, offers videoconferencing resources for teachers and students. I also signed up for NoodleTrip , a virtual field-trip search engine, which I thought would have enormous possibilities for second-language and humanities teaching. However, most virtual field trips have to be purchased with prices ranging from $50 to $185! Caveat Emptor! Just another reminder that now, more than ever, we need to be critical consumers of what we view, download, upload and sign up for on the Web.