Lecture, Textbook, or YouTube?

Have you ever had a teacher who, instead of lecturing or making you read a boring textbook, let you watch YouTube videos instead? Well, I just did and it was pretty a pretty awesome experience. I’m a pretty visual person, so being able to watch a video while I retained information worked well for me. Then, using the graphic organizer that was provided helped me take better notes. I didn’t take useless notes, but rather took notes the main information that my professor wanted me to know. The assignment was not left at just watching a video and taking notes, we had to show what we learned from the video. To show our understanding we wrote an article and posted the article in a group wiki to share with our classmates and exchange what we each took out of the video.

I would definitely use YouTube watching in my own teaching. If I was teaching a lower grade I would watch the video as a whole class and give the students a simple graphic organizer, probably with fill in the blank sentences. Then as a class we could discuss what we learned from the video. After the discussion the students would write down a couple main ideas that they really liked and we could use these to create a mini book about the subject we were watching in the video and it would be put in the class library, to be used as a resource for the students. If I had some of the higher grades I would ask my students to watch the YouTube videos on their own time. I would give them a graphic organizer to make sure that they take notes on what I think are the main points. We would also have a class discussion, but instead of writing down the main ideas and making a mini book I would have the students write more. I would have them write their reflection in a wiki, that way they can have the wiki and information easily available to them.

A lot of students are visual learners and even if they aren’t students still get tired of lectures and reading chapter after chapter of textbooks. I am not saying that lectures and reading textbooks should not be done, but that they should not be the only source of conveying information to students. Students are going to use the internet and probably watch YouTube anyway, so as a teacher why not use that to your advantage. One enormous attribute to video watching, is the ability to pause the video when needed and rewind what was just said or shown. Being able to pause the video and write down the notes is awesome because you are able to take a complete note without missing the next point. Taking the notes is also easier with the graphic organizer because the students will know what to focus on and when notes need to be written down. Students are being given more and more information, but only need to retain certain things, so it helps to be told what the main ideas are.

Although using YouTube seems like a great idea, it might not be as easy as it looks. You have to trust that your students will actually watch the videos and take the notes. With the graphic organizers it could be easier for the students to cheat off of each other, but a way to nix that would be to have pop quizzes after the videos to make sure that they really learned from it. Then there are also parents to deal with. Not everyone is going to agree that students should be using YouTube to do homework. So to get the parents to understand how useful YouTube can be as a teaching tool, have the first assignment be done with a parent or other adult so they can see how it actually works. There will be parents who complain about not having a computer or internet, but those things are needed to do research and to write a paper. Think public libraries.

Things change, people change, and the ways students learn change. So, why shouldn’t the way students are being taught change also?