Teacher Tube: A Great Resource, If you Contribute
Online video is popular, and some videos become popular. Video sites such as YouTube™ are the current rage.
Link to TeacherTube™
Unfortunately, YouTube™ contains material that is unacceptable for use in school (although students devour this questionable content at home). School district's content filters (required by federal law) generally block YouTube™
TeacherTube: A Safe, Unblocked Alternative
What good is building a lesson around a wonderful video that perfectly captures your lesson's theme, only to have the item blocked by your district's content filter.
And, storing the YouTube™ video, even if you have the technology to capture it is…
- Time Consuming
- A "Memory Hog"
- Cumbersome to Transport from Home to School
But, TeacherTube™ is safe, video content is checked by humans, and users just have to complain to remove a questionable video.
Uploading content to the site is easy.
And, the company is even selling its technology to school districts so that each school district can build and keep instructional videos inside its own network!
The Site's Shortcoming
With all this "Too Good to be True" news, you know that there has to be a catch.
The catch is that there isn't much video on the site, at least not yet.
But, you could create instructional video and submit it to TeacherTube™.
Just remember that you may have to obtain school district approval to submit the video, especially if you use district equipment in any way to create the video product.
Sidebar
In almost all cases, any video that you create with district equipment belongs to the district. And school districts are notoriously stingy about sharing. Maybe the school district didn't attend kindergarten. Or, maybe there is something about the arrested development of some school district leaders that is involved. In any rate, check first to stay out of trouble.)
Another issue is obtaining parent permission either for…
- Capturing and publishing images of children
- Posting students' work (Children's Work is automatically copyrighted, but their parents control it while the children are minors)
Some really greedy school districts have policies that state (erroneously) that any student's work that is created with school district equipment has joint copyright ownership with the school district being able to use that material for as long as the district wants.
Sidebar within a Sidebar
This seems to be a violation of students' rights, and a court case where a student creates a really valuable piece of intellectual property will, I predict, decide in the favor of the student.
I met Jason and Jodi Smith, the developers of TeacherTube™ at the Region 20 Tech Fiesta in San Antonio, Texas this past week.
Jason and Jodi told me about an interview that they had scheduled that evening with Miguel Guhlin, Technology Director for one of the local school districts.
Link to that Blog posting and interview
Sidebar
I didn't know that Jason was a school district superintendent, and I wonder what comments I may have dropped that revealed my attitude about our bureaucrats needing to empower and support teachers.
Bottom Line
If you have instructional video that you can legally and ethically post on TeacherTube™, feel free to share. A video that you post on TeacherTube™ will reach children, unlike a posting on YouTube™ that will be filtered and blocked.
Out children deserve the great content that you can provide. Make that content open and free for all of them.
