#20 (WEEK 9) Discover TeacherTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos

In the last 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. Unfortunately this excellent resource has been blocked by the DET (there are lectures from universities and colleges around the world, interviews with industry leaders and scores of conference addresses and workshops there). There is, however, a poor cousin which we can still access from the TAFE network: TeacherTube, which is an online community for sharing instructional teacher videos.

Do some searching around TeacherTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from a Simple Reading Strategy Flip Book to a WWII Veteran Interview and NASA - Zero gravity cool experiments. 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 too offer. :)

Discovery Exercises:

1. Explore teacherTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
2. 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?
3. OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.

Discovery Resources:
Other popular video hosting sites (mostly blocked, but worth visiting from home):

• Yahoo Videos
• Google videos
• YouTube
• JumpCut by Yahoo! Teachers
• Others - top video site list

NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light Internet usage times.