The creators of YouTube (2009) say that, "YouTube is the world's most popular online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small."
Users of YouTube are able to search for videos about their hobbies and interests, first hand accounts of current events, share their own videos and make comments on other user's videos that they have viewed.
In the classroom, aside from using YouTube as a research tool, teachers could video their class and make it available for absent students to view at home. Students could also use YouTube to broadcast their own videos to the world to receive feedback. In doing this though, teachers would have to be aware of exactly what their students are broadcasting to the world. They would also have to make the students aware that they may receive some unwanted feedback by making their work available in such a public arena.
TeacherTube is an educational version of YouTube. TeacherTube provides an online community to share instructional videos that are educationally focused. It also contains a number of professional development videos for teachers. Just briefly looking around the site, I found a number of videos that I would use either in the classroom to teach students or videos to enhance my teaching.
Here is a link to video of an approach that one teacher took to try to get their students to listen to the school rules:
Not sure if I would take that approach, but hey, anything is worth a try!
(I tried to embedd this as a video but there was something wrong with the codes grrr)
YouTube (2009) YouTube Fact Sheet. Accessed 1 August 2009 on the World Wide Web: http://www.youtube.com/t/fact_sheet