TeacherTube Is a YouTube for Educators
A while back, I posted a blog entry titled "Online Interactivity for Educators: A Teacher's Tour of YouTube." Many people replied with comments, questions, suggestions, and so on.
A new site for educators, TeacherTube, takes the sharing, production, and community-building aspects of YouTube and offers an educator's version. According to TeacherTube’s founders, "We seek to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners."
The site officially launched in March 2007 and is slowly but surely gaining popularity. I've been sharing it and working with teachers in various districts to learn to take advantage of this kind of opportunity. What a great place for us to upload short instructional videos -- or long ones; there's no limit on size files or video length.
Would you like to know how to make large posters for your classroom using Microsoft Excel? Here's a tutorial.
I don't think it's at all meant to be a replacement for YouTube. Rather, it's a place that takes advantage of what uploaded, shared video offers -- community, customization, sharing, creating, and learning from each other.
According to TeacherTube, community members can
- upload, tag, and share videos worldwide.
- upload support files to attach educational activities, assessments, lesson plans, notes, and other file formats to your video.
- browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members.
- find, join, and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests.
- customize the experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, and creating playlists.
- integrate TeacherTube videos on Web sites using video embeds or application programming interfaces.
- make videos public or private; users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite.
Check TeacherTube out. Let us know what you think. Better yet, upload some of your own original work and post the links here. The site offers a great help section as well, even detailing how to download the videos for use offline. What a great way to share our resources and just have some fun.
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Comments (11)
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Janet could have downloaded
Janet could have downloaded these videos to her i-Pod or flash drive and there would be no "lag" time. That should solve it!
Janet Hunt, Did you try
Janet Hunt,
Did you try downloading it to your i-Pod or to a flash drive? Then you don't have to wait while it "lags" because you will already have it downloaded.
TeacherTube
I use TeacherTube because YouTube is blocked by the schools server. It can be slow - but when demonstrating, if you open it, let it load and then play it - it works OK. There is some nice content. Teachers much more knowledgeable then myself, load 'how to's' on things like 'voice thread', 'comic life' ect. and you get to see how they apply these things to learning in the real world. I use this info to advance my tech use in the classroom with my students.
I find this site extremely
I find this site extremely user unfriendly. If I am looking for a specific topic ie. energy, I type it in and I get every video imaginable. How can I request a certain topic and then get a list of videos and click on one to see it?
I keep wasting all my planning time trying to navigate this site.
TeacherTube is SLOOOOOOOW
I have tried on numerous occasions to show content on teachertube during staff meetings and workshops so that teachers will know about it and possibly use it as a resource for teaching...... almost everytime, the video lags so bad that I stop the demo. What's up?
Blocked
What a great resource. Many great videos for use in our classrooms. I also believe it will encourage creation of materials. Too bad it's blocked by our district.
TeacherTube Tutorials
As a technology specialist, I also love the idea of educators being able to view tutorials in one location. Our school district offers its teachers extensive training on a variety of software applications, but much of the information they learn is forgotten, because they don't practice using the news skills to the degree that would enable them to retain the information. If teachers had access to tutorials, they could view them as needed to complete tasks they might not otherwise attempt. Now that the software to create screen recordings has become more user-friendly, I may even create and upload some video tutorials myself soon, too!
TeacherTube off the net
Tried getting into TeacherTube yesterday, and it was gone. Tried again today and still off the net.
Advice
I think this could potentially be very useful. I would like to see a section on it where teachers could learn about other teacher's opinions of school systems to which they are considering applying---viewpoints on administration, atmosphere of schools, whether they consider the system teacher friendly, etc. This might need to be an anonoymous section so that teachers could write in what they really think, but it could steer people away from systems that have issues and provide information that you don't hear from Human Resources. It would also tip people off to jobs that may become available but are not yet posted as well as letting potential teachers know which ones do not give incoming teachers credit for all their experience.
TeacherTube Podcast
In an interview with two of the founders--one of which happens to be a superintendent for a Texas school district--they shared they might also start hosting podcast content!
You can listen to the entire interview at:
http://www.mguhlin.net/archives/2007/04/entry_3109.htm
Best wishes,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net
http://mguhlin.net