Tuesday 16 December 2008

Online Video: As Knowledge Resource

Since the birth of YouTube, the web has seen huge growth in the availability and quality of user generated online video. With just a simple webcam, or a digital camera or camcorder it is now possible for teachers and students to create and share their knowledge and experience of a vast range of topics. It's also possible for them to access a global pool of knowledge and experience from cultures all over the world.

YouTube

YouTube was originally set up as an online dating site, but has become one of the biggest user created video libraries in the world. With quite literally millions of video clips, it is a fantastic resource for materials and information. You can find anything there. One of the biggest problems though is that you can find anything there!!!

Apart from being a place to find and store your own videos, YouTube also offers some editing features; You can add annotations, change the sound track and also create your own private or public channel.


TeacherTube
In an attempt to make video sharing safer for teachers, students and educational establishments, Teacher Tube was created. This is a site where any teacher can create their own account and upload their own videos. It’s also a great place to find educational videos for teacher development.
If you create your own channel and add the video you want to use with your students, you can choose to keep it private, so that only people you invite can see the videos.
TeacherTube has the advantage that you can also upload support materials, worksheet and presentations for each video that your students or trainee teachers can download.

Video sharing for young learners
Using online video with young learners can be difficult, but Totlol can really help you. The content for the site is selected by educators especially for use in education with young learners. The community of registered users ensures that only suitable and useful videos are included and makes sure the service isn’t abused. This is also a great site to recommend to parents who what to help their children study.
Read this article to find out more: Video sharing for young learners

Downloading Online Video
Because of the many problems associated with using online video sharing resources, it can be really useful to download the clip to your own computer. This can help you in a number of ways:
It stops your students wandering around sites and finding unsuitable materials
  • You don’t need to worry about the Internet connection
  • You don’t need to worry that the clip may get moved
  • You can build the videos into other materials
  • You can edit the videos
There are a number of online converters which enable you to copy in the link to a Youtube video, choose a suitable format and then download it to your computer hard drive. One reliable one is http://vixy.net/


Another useful tool for this is idesktop.tv
You can use idesktopTV to search for videos across a wide range of video sharing platforms. You can then either email a link to someone or download the video in a range of different formats:


Here you can read a more in depth review of idesktop TV: Downloading Online video

Video Clips for Teaching English
Creating your own video material is great, but having someone do it for you is even better. Jamie Keddie runs a great site with regularly published Lesson plans based on video clips from YouTube.
Read more about Video Clips for teaching English

I hope this posting has given you some insight into the wealth of what's available and how to overcome some of the problems involved in exploiting these materials.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,
Video sharing is all the rage since a while now, and it does not seem to end. Everybody wants to share their videos, their passions and the things they like. There are so many sites around to publish videos on the web that it is sometimes hard to make a choice. We know some of the big players on the market like YouTube, Revver or Dailymotion, but there are so many others competing to be the number one, or targeting a specific audience, be it geographically (China, Japan, Turkey...), by language (German, Arabic, French...) or for the kind of content they focus on (cooking, planes, extreme sports...).
I have compiled a growing list of already more than 900 video sharing sites, video search engines, video download sites, and video publication and statistics online services that you can check at http://www.ilikesharingvideos.com
For each of them, you will get useful information such as their history, the country from which most of their visitors come, their niche, their rank, their latest news...
This site offers some other interesting features, like a forum about online videos, how to make money with your videos, how to create your own YouTube site, video contests, etc.
So if you are interested in video sharing or online video marketing, give an eye to this site, it worths it.
Cheers

Nik Peachey said...

Hi Alexis

That's an interesting link, though there seems to be a lot of advertising there, but you have collected together some petty interesting links.

I'll be checking a lot of those out in the new year.

Best

Nik

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