As in many districts around the world, the administration of our school district here in Kansas sees too great a risk in allowing students to have full access to the videos hosted at YouTube.  Several teachers, however, have found value in using carefully selected videos to supplement their curriculum.  The use of video is an illustration that the teacher is addressing multiple learning styles and that they are using all available means to motivate and instruct their students.  But allowing teachers and students to have access to the educational content on YouTube also increases the risk that students will inadvertently (or purposefully) access inappropriate video content through the site.

So I’m please to suggest the use of two different alternatives to YouTube that are more closely controlled and (at least as of this posting) are currently “allowed” within our district.  TeacherTube and SchoolTube are both alternatives that I would be comfortable using.  I’m personally more familiar with SchoolTube, simply because I created an account there as a moderator.  The process took about 24 – 48 hours for me to register and  them to “approve” my status.  I’ve uploaded three projects that I worked on with SES 1st graders this past year.  The students read a Jan Bret book “The Mitten” back during the cold winter months.  They brainstormed with their classroom teacher things that make them warm like the animals in the story.  Then they planned and took digital pictures of one another with their “warm” items.  I put the pictures together into PhotoStory 3, a free downloadable application.  Then I went into their classrooms with my laptop and projector and we had a short lesson on writing interesting, descriptive sentences before they wrote captions for their movies.  I added some copyright-free background music with the built-in PhotoStory 3 tools, and saved them as a Windows Media File movie.  A quick upload to SchoolTube means that no files storage space on our district servers is required!  I’ve embedded the videos below this post.  This was my first attempt, and it was quick and painless, though I’m sure you experienced movie critics out there can find flaws and make suggestions for improvement!

The use of the “moderated” video sites will solve some of the problems teachers were running into with being “blocked” out of YouTube.  However, the one problem YouTube causes for large networks that will NOT be resolved is the issue of bandwidth used when videos are shown from these sites.  Even one single user allowing the video to stream in from SchoolTube, TeacherTube or any similar service, will use large amounts of bandwidth and thus, take resources away from other users on the network.  If a whole lab of students is using a site like that, a sudden slow down of resources can be debilitating.  So even though there are appropriate alternatives, teachers need to take caution to make sure only critical videos are being used during school hours when others are also needing bandwidth.

OK…here are the embedded videos our first-graders made this past year.  Click on the black box to find the play button.

Teaching web searching skills is an important part of supporting students.  When the web was new and none of our students had access to it at home, we teachers would never dream of sending young people to the computer lab to do research without giving them instructions on using the Internet to search for resources.  Today, our kids are 100 times more comfortable using the computer and the Internet, but they still waste a lot of time searching when they could be more efficient with 30 minutes of instruction on web-search strategies.  Following how to “search” should come some direct instruction on how to “evaluate” what you find.  There are getting to be more and more poor resources on the Internet all the time.  Teaching kids to critically anaylze what they find is important, too.  This video from Common Craft is a short, high-interest intro (about 3 minutes) to help kids focus their searching skills.

A fun lesson that I’ve used in the past to emphasize the need for critical evaluation is to send students to some “fake” websites and pretend to be impressed by new information or new product that you “just heard about” on the web.  Education World has a great comprehensive list of good sites here. (My personal favorites are the Endangered Tree Octopus and DiHydrogen Monoxide.  After a few minutes of impressing the kids, explain that these are all fake sites that look great, but the information on them is totally bogus.  I’ve had several teachers in workshops over the years who just can’t believe that they would “allow” such false information on the web!

However we go about it, it is important that we don’t assume that young people know everything about the Internet and how to use it efficiently just because they can navigate it easily.  We can still improve their ability to work efficiently and to think critically if we spend a little time at it!