At 2:00am, YouTube is your Friend

October 19, 2009

Many of my colleagues who have dismissed YouTube as a dumping ground for “look at what funny stuff my dog can do” have missed out on a fabulous resource. Don’t get me wrong, there are some amusing videos featuring different animals doing lots of unlikely things; however, there also are tons of “how-to” videos. You need to learn how to do a certain crochet stitch, ask YouTube. You need to know how to check a certain car part, ask YouTube. You want your students to properly format their documents with headers, footers, page breaks, and hanging indents…yes, you guessed it, ask YouTube!

So this is just a short reminder to stop wasting time getting frustrated with your students and/or spending time in your class showing students how to do these things, just start assigning these videos to your students before papers are due! And what if you can’t find a YouTube video for what you need to show them, contribute to the resources by making your own video. It’s quick, it’s easy, just use Jing (a free screen capture software) and you’ll be making your own “how-to” video in no time.

This post was written originally here by Shelley Rodrigo, co-author of The Wadsworth Guide to Research.

Posted in technology