Webcams: Changing Education One Classroom at a Time

It has come time for this week's blogification! Excite thineselves! I mean any post containing two words in as many sentences flagged as incorrect yet present in my everyday vocabulary must mean that there is something very special on the way. Or The dictionary just needs to make some room. Either way.

The internet has produced many things. Many great things. Many things that are less than great. Not the least of these (and debatbly not the greatest) is the wonderful world of YouTube. YouTube is successful for a variety of reasons, but chief among them is ease of access. The ability for any person with a webcam or digital camera to upload videos of people doing hilarious (see: Evil Eye) or downright stupid (see: The Rest of YouTube) things has paved the way for a generation of user-generated greats, and the world has latched on. These videos entertain us, but what about the other side of YouTube? The side where people put things on YouTube that they care about, or that they find to be important or beneficial in some way? That's where the ease of access makes YouTube into one of the greatest tools a teacher can utilize in the classroom. The general content of YouTube can be utilized in a variety of ways, be it making a lesson more interesting by adding a funny clip, or showing students a scene from a certain movie or documentary about a certain subject. But there are other parts of YouTube meant specifically for education, and it is these that make me all giddy. TeacherTube is one such entity. It is not without its flaws, of course, because "free" really just means "you pay with seconds of your life watching boring ads." But the idea behind TeacherTube is a fantastic one: Allow teachers and students to upload videos which can be used in other classrooms, be it teacher to teacher, student to student, teacher to student, student to teacher, or class hamster to class snake. Some videos may really be simple projects, but the potential is limitless.

I believe I shall cut things short for now. I may make an unprecedented mid-week post, but don't hold me to it! I might not! Bust still... I might... Oh, the suspense. Anyway. Yep.