YouTube in the classroom

YouTube, when used correctly, has an amazing use in the classroom. It is the kind of research tool dreamed of for years. Students can use it to research topics through video. Many professors and authors tape interviews or lectures and post to the site, thus allowing very useful material to be available to all students with access to the internet. An example of this was when I was on prac at The Kings School and I took my Year 9 history Extension class to the computer room. The students instantly pulled up YouTube and within minutes they were watching snippets of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and listening to interviews with Dan Brown and leading religious leaders. This kind of information was much harder to access in the old Web 1.0 system.

Teachers can use programmes such as YouTube in various ways. They can give students links to videos to use when researching assignments, let the students research their own videos or even create videos of the classroom for the students to watch at home. The only problem with the last bit is there is no privacy on YouTube, so teachers would have to make sure they didn’t get students in the video and didn’t mind if others saw them teaching.

One benefit of using things like YouTube is that anyone can contribute, even students. This means that students can feel included in their learning, it can be self directed. This helps students feel they belong to the classroom and are more included socially. This is very important for a child’s development according to Dreikurs and Vygotsky.