Confessions Of A Youtuber

I have to confess that I’m addicted to Youtube. I first took a look at Youtube this past school year after talking with one of my students. I had shown my students a video about racism and in it an Asian American student talked about how he felt when some kids made fun of him by pretending to speak Chinese. My student told me she had just watched Rosie O’Donnell do the same thing in a video clip on Youtube (video link here). Later that evening I went to the site and watched the clip and afterwards I watched a video response to the O’Donnell clip (video link here). I was impressed with how quickly a response was posted to O’Donnell and how eloquent the rebuttal was. It demonstrated to me how powerful this new social media could be.

Since then I have looked through the site and found many video clips I could use at school. I use a program called Tubesock to download the clips so I can use them in class. I also signed up for a Youtube account and posted a few class videos myself (video link here). One of my videos has had over 800 views!

I understand why my school blocks the site and I happen to agree with that policy. Youtube hogs bandwidth and for every educational video on the site there are probably 100 that are inappropriate for students.

Here are three of my favorite Youtube videos:

• The Machine is Us/ing Us: This video was created by an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. It shows how the Internet has evolved from web 1.o to web 2.0.
• freedom 101: This video by rx2008 is a great example of a mash-up. It combines historical video footage and modern music to create a statement about freedom and voting. If you like this video, check out his video about President Bush called Imagine.
• Pick My Campaign Song: Round2: This hilarious video from Hillary Clinton's campaign team illustrates how these types of sites can be used to win support in political elections. It shows that she has a sense of humor and a little bit of tech savvy. I anticipate that we will be seeing many more videos like these as the 2008 election year draws closer.