You Tube in the Classroom

Looking into the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was very enlightening to me. It seems only natural that schools would be responsible to block students’ access to content that could be harmful. If schools are allowing students access to the internet, they need to monitor student usage. YouTube seems to be one of the most controversial websites under CIPA. In my district, YouTube is blocked by our filter when students are logged-in to the computers, but teachers have access to the website. This seems to be a fair compromise to me. I agree with ­­­­Karen Cator from the Department of Education that "teachers need to impose their professional judgments on materials that are available to their students” (Barseghian, 2011).

My views on YouTube have changed from teaching 5^th graders to spending my days with 2^nd graders now. Seven year olds (for the most part) are much more innocent when it comes to searching, but could easily see inappropriate materials if they were allowed to access YouTube. I also don’t see the need for 2^nd graders to be finding videos on their own. Personally, I use YouTube for my lessons often, however.  Cator says, “All sorts of YouTube videos are helpful in explaining complex concepts or telling a story…they present learning opportunities that are really helpful” (Barseghian, 2011). Students today are driven and more engaged than ever by digital media. Why not use these short videos to help with instructional delivery?

Before using any YouTube video, I always preview it from start to finish. Since anyone is able to post to YouTube, unfortunately there are people who incorporate and disguise a great deal of inappropriate content with the material I want to share. Pinterest, blogs, and surfing YouTube have given me a wide range of media to share. The computer teacher at my school strongly encourages that we never show a YouTube video directly from the site – not because of content, but the ads/videos that pop-up around yours and after yours is finished. As a result of that, she has introduced me to http://us.onlinevideoconverter.com/. After downloading the videos, I then store them on the shared drive to share with my students. As I learn more about the Creative Commons Licenses, that may change my views on doing that, but for now that is what I was encouraged to do.

References:

Barseghian, T. (2011, April 26). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/ 2011/04/straight-from-the-doe-facts-about-blocking-sites-in-schools/