Thing 9

YouTube is like our personal time machine :) I like that you can find videos of things from childhood and things from before childhood....old commercials, tv shows, music. Watching the videos can definitely stir up some nostalgia. What bothers me about YouTube and especially in regard to using videos found on the site in classrooms, are the inappropriate comments that you can stumble upon when you are least expecting them and the videos that are available on the side after you have chosen a video (some may not be appropriate). I did notice Kalyani said that videos can be downloaded and transferred to a DVD. When videos are transferred, is it strictly video transferred or are the comments included in the transfer? In any case, monitoring videos would have to be an important part of preparation before sharing anything with our classes.

In regard to useful videos for teaching, I searched 3 children's books authors, Patricia Polacco, Denise Brennan-Nelson, and Christopher Paul Curtis and found videos of them speaking and some videos with stories being read. I thought YouTube would be an interesting way to do an author study. I also searched Cab Calloway and The Four Tops to see if there were videos of performances and there were! I love that this is possible. I think videos of musical performers of the past, would be a really fun way to tie into social studies topics....students would not only hear, but see the music of the time period and how music has changed. On a personal sidenote, my history teacher in high school would tie in different components to the time period we were studying at the time. He made it fun. The ability for us to share videos of the past with our students makes things more concrete for them and I think would definitely peak their interest.