Credit: Hugh D'Andrade
It's one thing to talk about Mount St. Helens erupting in science class. It's another thing altogether to watch a video of the mountain's summit exploding into dust. Teachers all across the country are finding that judiciously chosen videos help students engage more deeply with the subject matter, and recall the information they've learned longer.
"A lot of students these days expect information to be presented in a flashy, entertaining way, so videos can help draw them in," says Larry Sanger, executive director of WatchKnow, a site that collects education-related videos [2].
Though YouTube [3] is blocked in many classrooms because of inappropriate materials on the site, there are many valuable (and downloadable) videos that do further learning.
The site lists an ever-growing collection of excellent educational content, everything from President Obama's weekly addresses to algebraic demonstrations. Here are a few ways to separate the wheat from the chaff:
- Limit your searches to respected sources. Most established newspapers, museums, libraries, radio stations, and institutions have specific channels on YouTube where they collect their content. Just search by the name of the outlet on YouTube (say, PBS), and that organization's channel will pop up. From there, you can search exclusively within PBS's content.
- Check out the K–12 education group on YouTube [4]. Teachers and students upload movies on this group, which has hundreds of videos on subjects ranging from making angel puppets to footage from a 2004 expedition to the Titanic.
- Go to teacher-specific sites. TeacherTube [5] and WatchKnow aggregate thousands of videos from educators, YouTube, and the rest of the Web. In essence, they are clearinghouses of educational videos that cover most school subjects, categorized by subject and education level. WatchKnow has a review panel of educators and educational video experts that vet videos from first-time submitters before posting.
Your YouTube Primer
When choosing clips for the classroom, keep them short. This gives you time to discuss what you've just shown and its significance to the larger lesson. Patrick Greaney, who just finished tenth grade, still remembers a photosynthesis video he watched in class at Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, that featured a catchy tune. "The song stuck in my head and made me remember the process better," he recalls. Once you've identified a video, there are several ways to bring it to the classroom.
- Register with YouTube. Set up a video playlist or a collection of favorites, then click them to stream the videos from a laptop. Just remember that YouTube videos are often removed without notice, so the clip you watched at home last night may not be there the next morning. Also, your school or school district might block access to the site.
- In classrooms where YouTube is blocked, download the video. Convert it to your playback format of choice (mp4, FLV, HD, AVI, MPEG, 3GP, iPhone, PSP, mp3, GIF) and store it on your laptop or PDA, which lets you access it at any time, even if it's removed from the site. YouTube doesn't typically offer a way to download and save most videos directly, but if you use Firefox, you can use the free DownloadHelper [6] extension, which makes most videos downloadable and convertible to several formats.
- Add the word kick to the URL before youtube. The URL kickyoutube.com [7] will load with a KickYouTube [8] toolbar that lets you download the file. Many Web sites can help you download videos, including Zamzar [9], YouTube Robot [10], and PodTube [11]. According to YouTube's terms of use, you're not supposed to download unless you see a download link.
Although the fair use clause in the Copyright Law of the United States [12] allows the use of works without permission for teaching, the user must adhere to some key regulations that can be vague and confusing. One thing is clear, though: Any material first published after 1978 is copyright protected. You can find the U.S. Copyright Office's educational-use guidelines [13] in Circular 21. The University System of Georgia links to a fair use checklist [14]; you can also email the video's maker for permission.
In the end, it's worth the effort. Great content is just a few clicks away.