Youtube - Initial Thoughts

I started watching Michael Wesch's presentation An anthropological introduction to Youtube, (Please notice that I finally figured out how to link sites to my blog, using words rather than just the web address - there's always something to figure out! (-: ) on Tuesday morning, but was unable to finish it until today (more about that later). I thoroughly enjoyed his presentation, and found it captivating because he used so many Youtube clips to support his discussion. The concepts he spoke about were amazing, and entirely new to me, but they became obvious once he presented and discussed them.

I then went on to watch his presentation Web 2.0 . . . The Machine is Us/ing Us. This is when I realized that, if I wanted to, I could spend days watching videos on my computer. Not only am I able to watch videos to support my learning in EDES 501, but I could use them to enhance my teaching. Although I have been aware of Youtube, and its potential to be quite useful in my classroom, I haven't actually explored or used it yet. The first reason being that up until this year, I didn't have the technology available to me in my classroom to do this; however, as of the end of last June, I can now hook up an LCD projector to my computer and show videos. This is pretty exciting for me, but this leads to my second reason for not yet having explored Youtube or Teachertube - I just can't seem to find the time!

Fortunately for me, and for my students, I will be exploring videosharing and thinking about where I can go with it over the next few weeks. However, one problem that did come up for me, and I would not have thought about this before, is that last night when I tried to access Wesch's presentation in order to finish watching it, I was unable to. There was a message saying that the video was unavailable for viewing at this time. I am uncertain why this occurred, but this could be a problem (and a big surprise) if I did select a video for viewing with my class. I will have to investigate further as to whether or not these can be saved somehow.