Book Brat (Teresa)

TeacherTube is a free resource dedicated to viewing teachers’ lessons. This site launched on March 6, 2007 and the goal is to provide the online community with space to share instructional videos. The company wanted a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers. Teachers can post videos or have students watch videos on a certain topic (in the hopes that your school has access to this website).

TeacherTube was started by Jason Smith, who has been an educator for 14 years. His brother, Adam and wife, Jodie also pitched in to begin the process.

“With TeacherTube, community members can:

• Upload, tag and share videos worldwide.
• Upload Support Files to attach your educational Activities, Assessments, Lesson Plans, Notes, and Other file formats to your video.
• Browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members.
• Find, join and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests.
• Customize the experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, and creating playlists.
• Integrate TeacherTube videos on websites using video embeds or APIs.
• Make videos public or private – users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite.”

It is free to join, but you must be a member to post comments. You can log in and get a password immediately. Once you have taken the video, click on the upload button at the right hand side. Here you will describe and tag the video. Once you find the file, you can assign it as public or private view.

The site has many options from which to choose. You can choose from a list of videos on the homepage from the following categories: most viewed, most discussed, most recent, top favorites, top rated, recently featured, and random. There are also “today’s featured videos.”

You can subscribe to many different RSS Feeds under the Channels tab. You can join a group so that you can view similar videos or be part of a private group and view the group’s videos. There are also two blogs in which you can participate.

Users can flag inappropriate videos which will be viewed by the TeacherTube staff and they will remove any inappropriate material.  The obvious use for this site is to view and post teacher lesson plans. Students can also join in to create various videos.

The two issues I had when I was working on the site were the speed and the advertisements. Maybe it is just at some points or some particular videos that run really slow. The ads rotate and one could be considered inappropriate for an elementary school setting (it was a horror film website with a scantily clad woman surrounded by a beastly ghoul).

As an elementary school library media specialist I would use this to benefit a class in which I had already collaborated with the teacher. The content can vary. One project I would put online is our 4th grade egg dropping contest (students build container which they think will withstand an egg breaking when dropped from 6′).

A school in Bartlett posted a video on how kindergartners used shape blocks to create symmetrical designs: http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=fcee05b046edd635e27d

Have you heard of Clay Animation? Well, take a look at this link and you will see how it works:

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=c904e22309f6fa599e98 

The following link is to an article about TeacherTube’s history and how teachers use it: http://www.azcentral.com/business/consumer/articles/0326biz-TeacherTube-26.html

Some challenges, of course, would be getting access to the site through a school district. Teacher/parent/student/administration permission to post online may be an issue. Safety may also be a concern for some.