Wikipedia or You Tube: For or against?
First off let me say that I try my best to allow my students the freedom to look for "unorthodox" ways to prove they have mastered a learning target. In the past I have allowed a rap, a video, a puppet show, a mural, a written play, a poster and many other things. I believe that students should have the freedom to show me what they have learned instead of just passing a test. That being said, I normally do not allow Wikipedia to be used by my students when they are researching a question or issue. I don't see it as viable simply because there are THOUSANDS of other resources they could use. Wikipedia, to me, seems like a short cut.
As far as You Tube goes, yes I do allow them to use it and yes I have used it myself in many a presentation to my class. I find this site lends itself to many arena. Also, with Wikipedia anyone can add, alter and take way, You Tube is a finished product, a video, that no one can really alter. All that can be done is after the fact of the video. We can comment, share, report but we can't change the actual video.
You are right that you can not alter or edit a You Tube video, but can you trust the accuracy of the information? Or are there so many videos on topic that you can pick and choose? I am not that familiar with You Tube, so I am not sure of the answers. And then what do you do about what seems to be a common concern that the students watch You Tubes that are not appropriate for them or school?
ReplyDeleteThat is a great question Barbara. Can you trust the information? My answer is that you can trust it to a degree. I can trust that the person in the video really had this life problem that they are talking about for example. I have even shown my students a video called "My Friend Martin via You Tube for Martin LUther King Jr. Day. I guess I am not always using it strictly for academic fact, I sometimes use it for social issues and such.
ReplyDeleteIt is nice to have the ability to do things like showing Martin Luther King Jr. footage to your class. I honestly don't know what teachers did before YouTube! I love showing videos, provided that I preview them.
ReplyDeleteHi Juliana. I think you hit the nail on the head: The most impoortant thing is to preview the material first. I have heard horror stories about a teacher showing some seemingly innocent video and "Wow! Let's turn that off!" When we don't preview I think we play with our own future.
ReplyDeleteYou make an excellent point about YouTube videos being finished products. One of my instructional videos several years ago--from my first semester teaching AP Microeconomics--immediately got so many negative reviews, I re-watched it to see what was going on. I had, in fact, made a pretty serious mistake explaining the concept and immediately took the video down. Barring that kind of action, the videos are and will be available in their current format for better or worse.
ReplyDeleteRebecca, that is one of my worst nightmares with this concept. I am beginning to create the screencasts and such for some professional tutorials and I am deathly afraid I am going to explain something wrong or advise incorrently. Ugh!
ReplyDeleteThe question/process to go through is to watch the video, see the ratings, and view the comments (although that can be painful, as comments can quickly decay into useless banter and always ends up being political). The question to ask then is whether teacher actually do that, or do they simply view 1-2 minutes of a video and say, "yep...good enough?"
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon Professor. I can honestl say, as a teacher, I usually watch for a few minutes or maybe the entire thing and then call it good. I have never even thought about reading the comments. I am curious about that action. Why read the comments? What information would I be looking for?
ReplyDeleteMatt, you're comments this week were really useful to me. In regards to reading the comments however, I think that they can be sometimes helpful depending upon the subject format/material. For instance, many people utlize the comments section to allow others to discuss what they've learned and gathered. This can be tremedously useful for future references.
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