Is YouTube the New Stage Audition?

Real people, posting real videos. It’s like “America’s Funniest Home Videos” for the mainstream, online audience – in terms of entertainment. Yet, there is so much to learn from YouTube and its videos are replacing some traditional methods and modes of learning. From learning guitar chords and how to tie a tie to showing how to solve algebraic equations and listening to movie reviews, YouTube is involved in the learning process of our students - as it is for many of us, as educators.

The commercial dollars and advertising revenue put up for television spots are gradually shifting to online forums of marketing using the everyday person and their story as the focus. Multi-million dollar contracts for commercial endorsements used to be the measuring stick of success – now many of us are gauging popularity and notoriety by YouTube views, Google PageRanks and “likes.”

Fame is becoming more of a ground-up process through the online social networks and user-generated content that we can think, create, wield and apply. Our success is able to grow through user-driven platforms like Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube.

Former students of mine, Jake and Taylor, have been posting videos of their ‘parkour’ adventures on their very own YouTube channel. They have started their own enterprise by doing this and are clearly passionate about their goals and how to share them – in fact they already have 72 subscribers! You can check out their YouTube channel “TheLiftedMovement” and comment on their videos to join in on their learning experience.

For our students, the world is their oyster; if they can envision, invest and achieve their goals. When it comes to the new online audition stages that exist for them, let’s try to find ways to open up this process as a supportive, collaboration effort. Challenge your students to post a video that shows them teaching others how to do something. Have them demonstrate a talent or share their views on an important topic. By reaching out to both a real-life (their classmates) and online peer audience, who knows where the conversation will go and how the learning will play out?

Are your students posting videos on YouTube? Have you ‘showcased’ them in the classroom, and if so, what was the experience like for the student, peers and you – the teacher?

Team Teaching with YouTube

We've often heard the saying, "Everything I need to know, I learned in Kindergarten." It's supposed to be a humorous view of how the education system teaches the fundamentals early on and then fills the remainder of a student's time with information that is not as important. I'd like to offer my own current one: "Everything I need to know, I learned on YouTube." Students today are using this video archive to teach them skills and information that they search and seek out.

We don't need to be the controllers of the content. Teachers today stand to gain nothing of themselves or their students by keeping the knowledge guarded or secured. We need to educate students about how to use the knowledge. They can already find any answer they want by searching it online. They don't need a teacher (for instance) to inform them about historical dates and details. They need a curriculum expert to enlighten them about how those historical events are playing out right now in our world.

Students need direction and critical thinking skills about the kinds of things they seen online and find posted on YouTube. They can access it at almost any age; and yet, have not been taught how to process most of it into a context or framework that can build their own knowledge or understanding. YouTube and Google hold the knowledge. Teachers, now, are standing outside looking in through the windows and wondering what lessons their students are learning in today's online classrooms. They attend their choice of online classes at any given moment. They search and it appears instantly. They read what they want and move on when they feel like it.

When you teach, ask yourself, "how does this information prepare my students for the real world and what matters to them?" If you struggle with this question, how would you use the information if you weren't a teacher and therefore didn't need to know it to teach it? Do you remember when you learned the things you know or do you perhaps even learn some of it only because you need to teach it to your class? Rethink what you do and reap the benefits of either legitimizing your practice or starting to drive the change to improve your practice.