Thing #20 - Beyond YouTube

I embedded a YouTube video below of Bill Gates addressing what America needs to do to make their teachers great. I thought this video was interesting because its coming from a non-educator viewpoint and it's relevant to my career. I liked YouTube's ease of use and the fact that you can subscribe to certain video authors. The one thing I didn't like was the fact that most of the videos on YouTube aren't worth viewing. It would be interesting to have my students create videos to explain various concepts from my class and see what sort of feedback they get from their peers and the public. My classroom website would definitely have an archive of YouTube videos that compliment the curriculum we are going over in class. Students can use these videos as a resource for doing homework and studying for tests.

One of the new tools I visited was Vine. Vine is a platform for people to make short videos (up to 6 seconds) that are to be shared with others. I could have my students use Vine to make a short clip of them introducing themselves or stating what they want to learn about this year in my class. I could then compile the videos into one large file and show the class their creation.