No love for YouTube?
In reflecting on organizational change, I’m reminded of a recent frustrating experience regarding YouTube use in school. Over the last few years, I’ve heard many school administrators comment that they are skeptical about the value of YouTube in the classroom. While I frequently use YouTube in my classes to show cultural content, I honestly believe that many school administrators think that the only content available on YouTube are wacky videos of teenagers attempting dangerous stunts on skateboards. Fortunately, I’ve been able to simply ignore this misconception and merrily use YouTube as an effective way to engage my students.
Last week our IT department announced that they would be severely restricting the amount of bandwidth that would be available for “entertainment.” Unfortunately, “YouTube” has been lumped into the “entertainment” category. Now, I will likely be unable to show YouTube videos in my classroom with any efficiency. As much as I have tried to protest, the IT department is convinced that students watching goofy YouTube videos in the computer labs are the root cause of our network/bandwidth issues.
Fortunately, I ran across a new site: www.teachertube.com This site is YouTube-esque, but apparently only contains links to educational videos. I am hopeful that I will be able to convince my IT department to allow unrestricted access to TeacherTube. While the variety of content will certainly be significantly less, at least I’ll still be able to post videos for my students and share them in class!
Eva Maria
