The power of Youtube

The two articles "Youtube vs. Boob Tube" and "Youtube and the Cultural Studies Classroom" bring up important issues regarding online video (specifically youtube) use in the classroom. The article in Wired, "Youtube vs. Boob tube" doesn't explicitly comment on youtube in schools, but it raises questions that pertain to teachers. The focus is on youtube as a social medium; an instantaneous world that elicits popularity through what others deem as entertainment. The article points out that 65,000 videos are uploaded every single day, but only a fraction of those videos collect enough views to be considered a meme. The first video it presents is "boom goes the Dynamite," a painful sportscast from a college freshman. I don't know what was worse, watching the entire 3:45 hoping that things would get better or reading the especially lame comments such as, "he must be a virgin." Like Wired, I too find it interesting what becomes popular. Who would have thought an obese teenager dancing to a Romanian song would become one of the most viewed videos on the internet. It just goes to show that the line between quality and popular entertainment is obscure.

The question is, what place do these pop culture youtube videos have in the classroom? Am I the cool teacher for knowing the entire Numa Numa dance, or will I be viewed as another lame adult trying to be "cool"? What place do memes have in the classroom? I really cannot come up with a lesson that can incorporate a tumble video. It is funny, but now appropriate for the classroom. Students can create their own youtube videos for assignments, but that brings up permission issues. Do teachers need to get permission from parents to publish a student's video on youtube?

The article also brings up another great question: With 65,000 video uploads a day, how long do these meme videos continue to be memes? What is the life expectancy of a youtube video? I wonder what percentage of my first classroom of students will even know about the Numa Numa dance. One minute, a youtuber is a star for uploading a video about a baby brother biting the finger of an older brother, and the next minute youtube viewers have moved on to funnier material. Is there ever going to be a time when the material has run out of entertainment? Youtube is an exploding world of shared content. Whenever a vast amount of people are constricted to one place, there is bound to be some issues. The second article touches on those issues.

Christopher Conway's article matches the content on youtube with classroom content. His article focuses on Higher Ed, but there is a lot that translates over to secondary education as well. The first is the idea that teachers can use youtube videos as a supplement to lessons. He gives examples of videos that he used in some of his classes. Ironically, as I clicked on the links in the article I found that a number of the videos he uses have been taken down because of copy-right infringement. If I want to show a clip from a Shakespeare film, am I going to have a problem accessing the clip because of copy-right? Conway was able to show videos to his college students without any problems, but as a secondary education teacher in a public school am I going to have to get parental permission for every youtube video clip I show? It is not like youtube videos have ratings and many school districts mandate that teachers can only show 'G' ratings without parental permission, so how will I deal with youtube. Also, many school have firewalls that prevent sites like youtube from being accessed. Am I even going to be able to get the clips at school?

After reading the article I began searching for videos in my content area. It struck me as funny that I had never actually searched youtube for readings of poetry or animated novel clips before. Usually my experience with youtube involved funny clips that were shared with me or hours of searching for "best TV bloopers" in order to save myself from boredom. Conway is correct in the fact that youtube is a place with rich materials for teachers. You can find anything on the site. I can show not one but hundreds of clips from different versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. And the clip of the woman reciting her Ode to Dickinson is an incredible way to show students how to mimic poets. Youtube is a great source for visual supplements for classroom lessons, but there are many issues that go along with the open social network. Conway brings up many of these issues at the end of his article.

I especially appreciated his pointing out that copy-right is going to be an on-going issue for youtube users, especially now that google owns it. I also don't want to show my students a clip only to have advertisements scrolled all over the page, or deal with obnoxious comments that distract from the overall content (see Yo comments are Whak!). I think Conway is right, there is a place for youtube in the classroom, but there are also going to be some major changes that we must acknowledge and deal with in order to fully take advantage of the opportunities that youtube provides.