Video Sharing

Video sharing has evolved from inviting friends and family over to your house to view the latest slide show of your summer vacation to sharing it with the world. Budding filmmakers and actors/actresses need look no further than the likes of YouTube to demonstrate their talent. Video sharing is defined by PC Magazine’s online encyclopedia, as “a Web site that lets people upload and share their video clips to the public at large or to invited guests.” (http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=video+sharing+site&i=57378,00.asp) There are a variety of video sharing sites available and comparisons of these can be found on the web through a Google search. However, the site I focused on was YouTube since it was the one I heard and read the most about.

YouTube is a relatively new phenomenon having been created just over 3 and a half years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube). It is apparent though that “the popular, free video-sharing site has taken the online world by storm, and with it, many of our students, who are posting videos about anything and nothing all at the same time.” (Adam, Anna & Mowers, Helen. “You Tube Comes to the Classroom” (2007) School Library Journal. New York: New York. Vol. 53, Iss. 1: pg. 22) It doesn’t make sense then for educators to ignore it or dismiss it as simply another online tool for the computer generation. It is important to teach students how to use video sharing sites safely and to utilize these sites in a variety of ways during lessons. I admit though that with all other online tools, I began to explore YouTube with a sense of caution. It certainly didn’t help that I had heard about and have been shown some YouTube videos that contained more questionable content. My initial thoughts were how could this be used in an educational setting?

It was during a unit on Space last year, that YouTube first entered my mind as a possible benefit to teaching and learning. Students were completing a Webquest in which one question included discussing the living and working conditions aboard the International Space Station. Students found this topic interesting and had a lot of questions about it. This led to locating and viewing video clips that showed astronauts inside a Space Station experiencing zero gravity. Examples include: “Footage from International Space Station” and “Fun on the space station”. These clips provided an opportunity for us to view something that only a very few people have seen and experienced firsthand. There are many possibilities within different subject areas to take advantage of similar firsthand accounts.

So how does one find appropriate videos? I found that you do not need to register to view videos so I happily embarked on a search of some of the videos listed by Laura Milligan as “The 100 Awesome Youtube Vids for Librarians”. I entered the titles in YouTube’s search box for the videos I thought would be of professional interest and found the majority of them easily. It was also beneficial to have related videos displayed on the right hand side of the screen and I viewed some of these as well. The majority of videos were indeed good, however, some of them focused on college libraries or public libraries, so I decided to search for middle school libraries. I was alarmed to discover though that as I typed these words in, when I got to “middle school”, the feature that shows matches as you are typing (so as to click on your choice without having to type it all in) displayed four of the ten choices to be about middle school fights. This clearly showed the need to teach students how to locate appropriate sites and what to do if they find something that is not appropriate on a video sharing site. I carried on my searching for videos, this time looking for specific authors and books, of which I found some. I also opened the “Channels” tab and clicked on “Education” but unfortunately found that these videos were not necessarily meant for education in the “school sense”.


The next step after having found your videos is to share these with a class. This can be done in your classroom if you have internet access (and the site is not blocked) by opening up YouTube and entering in the titles in the search box. You could also collect the URLs for the videos and create a link in a Word Document. However, the most efficient way is to register with YouTube and create an account. In this way, you can save the videos you would like to show in a playlist as outlined by James Trier in “’Cool’ Engagements with YouTube: Part 2” (Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. 2007 Newark: New Jersey. Vol. 50, Iss. 7, pg. 598). In his explanation of generating playlists, he also points out another good reason to use videosharing sites as while “most of these video clips are probably available in ‘hard copy’ on videocassettes or DVDs, it is easy to imagine the great amount of time, effort, and money that would go into gathering them together from their original formats.” Another method of showing YouTube videos without a direct link to the site itself “is to convert the video to another format.” (Adam, Anna & Mowers, Helen. “You Tube Comes to the Classroom” (2007) School Library Journal. New York: New York. Vol. 53, Iss. 1: pg. 22). The format suggested for PC users was KeepVid but I did not have the opportunity to use it yet.

Even after discovering the many positive features on YouTube, there was still a bit of concern for me regarding students being exposed to inappropriate content, especially younger students. This led to the discovery of Totlol which is a video sharing site designed for children 12 and younger. Totlol first became available this past summer and is comprised of videos that parents have viewed and selected from YouTube. It takes away the concern of “appropriateness”. Two other video sharing sites that are intended for educational purposes are TeacherTube and SchoolTube. I found that these sites were okay but the videos were slow to upload and quite often paused for a second or two and had to upload during the viewing. Also, some of the advertising on the pages of TeacherTube were not suitable for younger students.

There are many ideas for using video sharing sites like YouTube and Totlol for teaching. Students can be taught how to use these sites to upload their own videos. This can lead into students creating videos for all sorts of topics and subjects. One example that I saw on YouTube was making a fictitious movie trailer for a book that students had read. Also, teachers could create videos to teach certain concepts to students as well as utilize those that already exist. I am eager to create a library etiquette video relevant to our school after viewing those already on YouTube. Using Totlol, a great reality versus fiction lesson could be initiated by showing the “Elephant Jumping on Trampoline”, pet care can be demonstrated using one of a series of videos such as “I Guinea Pig”, poetry can be shared by students or by authors like Shel Silverstein with his “The Giving Tree 1973”, and literature can be brought to life through plays and skits or even a reading aloud of a book such as Robert Munsch’s “Love You Forever”.

Video sharing is an old concept that has been made new by the use of Web 2.0. It has great potential as a teaching and learning tool and I intend to make full use of this potential as an educator.