Thing 8: YouTube & More

By now, the world knows YouTube as the source of all things video on the Internet. And I do mean “all things.” The good, the bad, and the ugly are all there for all to see.

Thing 8: Video (Week of July 19-25)

YouTube revolutionizes the way video is shared on the Internet by making it easy to upload and share videos. Other video sites have popped up, including Google Video. YouTube is now owned by Google, so it will be interesting to see the how the evolution/merging of the two sites happens. Right now, a search of either one returns results from both sites.

There are dozens of other video sites, but among the Web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day. For those who register for a free account, YouTube provides additional features turning it into a social networking service.
These features include the ability to…

• create a profile
• customize your profile with favorites, playlists and subscriptions to channels & tags
• upload & tag your videos
• "friend" other YouTube users
• send messages and even broadcast messages to all your YouTube friends
• rate and add comments to videos
  

A social site like YouTube democratizes film making, the same way blogs democratize publishing. The videos vary in lenght (up to ten minutes) and run the gamut of subjects. You'll find personal rumblings, amateur TV shows, wedding videos and other personal videos people upload to share with family and friends. But you'll also find famous scenes from movies, music performances, vintage television advertising, videos of speeches by Nelson Mandala, Martin Luther King, Jr, and JFK, the first moon landing and animations of DNA replication.

For Thing 8, you will do some exploring in YouTube or Google Video. Find a video that relates to your personal interests or area of scholarship, or that simply appeals to your sense of humor.

Speaking of sense of humor:




Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore YouTube or Google Video & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog. Enter a keyword or words in the search box. After you find a video, you can learn more about it (including what tags it has) by click the little double-arrow icon directly below the video. This opens an area with more information.
2. Place a YouTube video inside your blog by following these instructions. These instructions show how to place other video in a Blogger post.
3. On your blog: why did you choose this video? Have you used online videos in your classrooms or for your work before? Would you in the future? Have you uploaded any of your own videos to an online sharing site?