Thing #18 -- YouTube, TeacherTube, and User-Generated Video

Within the past few years, online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily. Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials and 60s and 70s music videos (hey...here's the REAL music) to library dominoes and a video made by library school students for National Library Week. There's also the cult classic Conan the Librarian. See also:

• Introducing the Book
• Web 2.0
• Library 2.0 Manifesto
• March of the Librarians

Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching, too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has to offer.

Discovery Resources:

• Expert Village
• Yahoo Videos
• Google videos
• TeacherTube
• Others - top video site list
• Web Video Cheatsheet
  

Discovery Exercise:

Explore YouTube or TeacherTube and find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.

• Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or components of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?

If you want more (optional):

Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the for "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.

NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light Internet usage times. Also, don't forget that YouTube videos are blocked -- you may want to concentrate your video exploration to TeacherTube.