Video is a valuable teaching resource. In the past, showing video was very much teacher controlled. The teacher would select a video, preview it, and decide if it was worth showing to students. The teacher would place the VCR in the VCR Player, gather the students around and view the video.
Boy how times have changed. Video is now readily available. YouTube has more than 300 hours of video added every minute. However, not all of that video is appropriate for students. YouTube can be a great resource, but, by Federal law (and common sense), students need to be protected from seeing inappropriate material.
We have been working hard on providing a way for teachers to provide YouTube videos to students. We have now made restricted videos available for students. This means that videos that are labeled as restricted (or those that are specifically approved by the district) are available for students to view. Thus, YouTube videos can now be embedded into an iLearn course, or linked on a blog for students to view. That’s right, students now have access to YouTube (at least a portion of it).
Teachers retain full rights to YouTube videos. However, teachers must be signed into Google in order to have full rights (otherwise, teachers have a restricted view as well). If you are a teacher, please make sure to sign into Gmail before going to YouTube. As always, make sure that you don’t leave a computer signed in as a teacher.
We will be working with the TAC to identify a process of approving videos. (There was a period of time where all teachers could approve videos, but that has been corrected.) As always, we will continue to work to empower teachers and students for the best possible learning conditions.