The other day I was goofing around on Youtube and did a search for a bizarre episode of the Buck Rogers show from the 80s. It was called Space Vampires and it scared the heck out of me. What do you know? There was a clip and though it was hard to wear my ten year old eyes, I suppose I could remember why it scared me. Anyway it’s a testament to how much is on Youtube and the benefits of SO many people being able to upload videos. Now, one could ask, what’s going on (or not) in this person’s life that he had to upload that video? And what’s going on (or not) in mine that I found my way to it. It also brings up copyright issues, I assume. But on the positive side, with millions of people uploading videos of the home variety and the pilfered variety, access to videos that are entertaining, and that might be of educational use, increases every day.
I watched the “Dancing” video the other day because I’d read about it in the Times. It’s of this dude dancing all over the world with random people. It’s joy inducing just like everyone says. Those viral videos that become a part of pop culture really demonstrate the democratic nature of Youtube and the net. From an educational perspective it tells me two things. First, I could use videos like that as “art pieces” to discuss and write about. Almost like a visual poem. Second, I could have students create video stories, whether or literal or abstract, connected to a text or not.
As part of my thing 19 search I typed in Oedipus into teachertube and up popped a very funny, clever and somewhat sophomoric (though not entirely in a bad way) video that is a spoof of the Real World but with characters from the play. It manages to deal with themes from the play while updating the ideas and including jokes that I’m sure made the project more fun for the students. I’m glad I found it, because it made me realize that I haven’t really used video in such a way. Now, I’m not QUITE sure yet of the benefits of uploading the videos. Isn’t creating the video the important part? I suppose it might give students extra motivation to know they can get feedback and that other students could see the videos. It seems to me that unless there’s some kind of instructional purpose to the video than it may be nothing more than a public forum for the student work—and maybe that’s enough?
I also checked out a video that a broadcast journalism class put on teachertube. It is a story about retiring teachers featuring interviews with the teachers, colleagues, and students. I could see trying out little stories like this for our newspaper blog. Similar to the audio clips from the previous lesson, video clips could really enhance the blog and draw students in. It could obviously become very distracting from our business of writing stories (not to mention bring up even more problems with monitoring appropriateness, not to mention require me to actually learn how to TEACH broadcast journalism), but it may just be that in 2008, video content is necessary and that we may need to jump and learn as we swim. I could see some person on the street interviews or great clips from games or video editorials or visits to nearby places of interest. It could hit really big. If it does, I’ll be sure to thank the folks at 23 things. No joke.
(BTW: I tried for about an hour to embed the teachertube videos to no avail. So i just put in the link instead. Frustrating!)
