Youtube-esque video sites

It's one of those debates that seems made for educators, and will likely never be fully resolved without some sort of official legislation from juridical bodies: while we, as teachers, can easily see the benefit of a web tool like Youtube in the classroom, that simple fact does not mean that there are not a host of other issues that surround just how (or if) to use Youtube in schools, foremost among them being: intellectual property/copyright issues with regards to playing videos and privacy issues when it comes to posting videos that include our students. The former issue is more of a philosophical conundrum for our generation--unique to the last ten years in the specific ways that intellectual property must now be considered--that could take an inestimable amount of time to sort itself out. The latter issue falls firmly in the realm of both Freedom of Information and Privacy Act as well as student safety issues. We know already that to take pictures or video of students generally requires some sort of parental consent, and that posting the faces (and perhaps names and locations) of students on Youtube literally broadcasts them to the world.

In his short article, "YouTube in the Classroom," Brad Moon describes his excited daughter coming home from school one day explaining how her class project/presentation is now on the internet. This story does a nice job of illustrating a couple of key tensions surrounding the debate of just how to implement tools like Youtube in education: on the one hand, the young girl is clearly motivated, engaged, and excited to have her work broadcast online--to literally be published and to have her learning viewable (and "commentable"!) by an audience that is bigger than her classmates and teacher. On the other hand, dad was initially shocked and concerned (as are a number of the article's readers who posted their own replies to Moon's article) in a predictable manner--his parental instincts kicked in and he immediately felt like his daughter might now be somehow vulnerable or exposed in a way that she hadn't been before the video was posted.

However, Moon goes on to praise the benefits of tools like Youtube. And, in the end, I continue to feel like that is likely the direction we are headed as educators: the potential benefits of the tools outweigh the potential downsides--and that, further, it is likely that with some general "good sense" web guidelines around wisely posting videos schools and teachers will be able to largely avoid the obvious potential pitfalls surrounding students safety and privacy.