Final Wordle

Thank you for taking the time to explore our blog!

There are a lot of things to think about when you start to dig around for information on YouTube and its relationship with young adolescents. Hopefully we have provided you with some delicious food for thought regarding these issues!

To summarize, we've taken the liberty of preparing this Wordle, which was made from all of our consulted articles, documents and websites.

Happy Easter!! 

What's So Appealing?

I think it's safe to say that most middle school students these days have a cell phone.  Those that don't have a phone, very likely have an iPod touch or some other kind of electronic device.  On these pocket-sized pieces of technology, there are countless games and programs to keep children entertained and occupied.  These children become bored quite quickly, and they turn to YouTube.  With an estimated 24 hours of video uploaded every minute, there is literally always something new to watch.

Since YouTube’s creation in 2005, there have been many popular videos that have come and gone.  Found in this article is a list of the 50 most popular videos.  Clicking on the links will take you to the video and a brief explanation regarding it's popularity.

These videos are popular due to their amazing ability to entertain the viewers.  Human beings love to be entertained, and middle school children are no different.  At the click of a mouse, they can find hundreds of funny or cute videos.  There are also many strange videos on this site that baffle and confuse the viewers: "Exactly how am I supposed to respond to this?!"  If you've seen a hilarious commercial that you desperately want to share with those you love, all is not lost!  You can watch it to your hearts content.  In an age where the immediate retrieval of basic information has become so commonplace, videos and commercials are becoming just as accessible.  There are also videos that are a flash to the past.  These types of videos, of which there are hundreds, serve as reminders to children that things have not always been the way they are now.  

Social Networking on YouTube

Social Networking on YouTube

I'm not going to go terribly in depth here. I just wanted to draw attention to this article from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication which explores how YouTube is used as a social networking site.


The analysis reveals how circulating and sharing videos reflects different social relationships among youth. It also identifies varying degrees of “publicness” in video sharing. 


Another interesting facet of this article to me was the 'Background' sections in which the author, Patricia Lange, examines the definition of social networks. The term has become so commonplace to many of us that we don't often consider what it actually means. Because it takes on such a broad definition, the choice becomes that of the user (of YouTube) whether or not YouTube is in fact a social network, an infrequent resource, internet hangout, or just another website.

YouTube in the Red Deer Public School District

One of the guiding questions we created for ourselves as we were planning this blog was maybe not so much a question, but more of a general curiosity about the availability of YouTube in Red Deer's schools.

The simple answer is that it varies from school to school. In my travels, I have spoken to some middle years teachers about this - it turns out they were wondering the same thing. One teacher said his (middle) school did not allow students access to YouTube but when he went to each of the three main high schools in Red Deer, access was available to all users of the school's wireless network. He was frustrated by this, pointing out that:

1. YouTube made great strides in its effort to 'clean up' the material available to users.
2. All students sign Internet User Agreement Contracts at the beginning of the school year which would hold them accountable for inappropriate use of sites such as YouTube.
3. Less dependable sites which are not blocked in the schools are being discovered by students as a replacement for YouTube.
4. Speaking from a purely speculative basis, perhaps the school's laptops would not take anywhere between 3 and 20 minutes to log in if the wireless resources were not being used to restrict access to the internet's most popular websites.
5. Even the principal may not know the answer as to why YouTube is not available in this school (the site of the conversation from which this information is derived).

Fortunately, any of the schools that do restrict YouTube access to students are more lenient with their teachers, all of whom are able to access YouTube to their heart's content. I take issue with this. This system sends a message that it is ok for a teacher to access a clip from Bill Nye the Science Guy to display a foolproof explanation of, let's say, clouds. A student in the library who is working on her cloud project is SOL. Wikipedia will have to do for her (if she's allowed to use Wikipedia, of course).

The message has been made pretty clear to us that we, as teachers of young adolescents, need to develop rapport and trust. We need to recognize students' interests and differentiate instruction accordingly blah blah blah; YouTube might, just might, be better at doing this than most teachers today. Just look at the Essentials of YouTube

Most of the qualities listed in some of the 'essential' information as described by YouTube add up an entity who could have a distinguishable relationship with any given user!! From an educational standpoint, YouTube could potentially take a student, who has reasonable levels of intrinsic motivation to learn, further than any teacher might be able to. Why? Simply put: because YouTube has more resources than the teacher does. And with a small amount of user cooperation, YouTube might be more clearly tuned in to a student's interests than a teacher (who likely has a relatively large number of students to keep track of).

I'm not suggesting that YouTube is a replacement for a human teacher. I am pointing out that YouTube has the capability to gain an understanding of what a student is interested in and take them further into that learning than a teacher left to his own devices.

Red Deer Public School District does have a district-wide policy regarding access to computing and information systems (document) but it leaves the specific details to its individual schools. A further check of sites specific to each middle school yielded little information about school-specific internet policy. This, to me, perpetuates the idea that a lot of schools in Red Deer and beyond do not allow access to YouTube because the site has been restricted for the last few years and no one ever managed to make it otherwise. Does anyone know whose job that is?

Account Creation Ease

As mentioned in a previous posting, it is very simple to set up a YouTube account.  An interested user only has to input the following information: first and last names, birthday and gender.  If any adolescent under the age of 13 attempts to create an account, this will pop up:

Google could not create your account

In order to have a Google Account, you must meet certain age requirements. To learn more about online child safety, visit the Federal Trade Commission's website.

During my research, I attempted to create an account roughly 8 times.  I was increasing the age of the fictional person named Mick Mack by one year each time.  YouTube became wise to my tricks and that warning popped up even when I changed my birth year to 1967.  To correct this, I simply changed my Internet browser and the user name I was attempting to create.  Problem solved.  If a determined minor wants to have a YouTube account, there is little standing in their way.

That Glimmer of Hope in Their Eyes? It's YouTube!

May I just take a moment to suggest that YouTube can inspire kids to do some pretty big things? I was just reading this article in the Globe and Mail and it's fifth point regarding YouTube celebrities made me think that a lot of younglings likely aspire, among other things, to be adorned with YouTube fame. Hear me out.

I don't mean that they go on about it incessantly, I argue that YouTube can naturally find its way into anyone's thoughts at any given time. It wasn't just me who played with video cameras when I was growing up, was it? I used to make videos with my friends and cousins all the time (we never had a video camera at home) - I think they've all disappeared into oblivion now. Had the technology of today been available at that point, most of those videos would probably be on YouTube. Our thoughts would have been along the lines of "Maybe this backyard-trampoline-wrestling video will get a million views." The product of this thought process is that it is now hard to think about making a video without having a sub-thought of YouTube attached.

Considering the taken-for-granted ability to create video, it may be naive of me to think that this is as exciting of a pastime as it used to be, but I do believe that it is fair to assume that YouTube, as a thought, is always attached to the concept of self-made video. If everyone is anything like me, they are always wondering as they shoot a video clip on their iPhone: Should I upload this? Who am I uploading this for? Will it go viral? 


I haven't so thoroughly explored YouTube as a gateway to fame as I thought I might in this post, but I'll look further into that phenomenon, as I do believe that young students put a lot of stock into fame-producing qualities that YouTube is bursting at the seams with.

Bibliography

The Creators of this blog wish to establish a resting place for the hard-working links that have fuelled this endeavour. Let it be such that that place be here.


://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/education/youtube-finds-a-way-off-schools-banned-list.html?pagewanted=all


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/happy-birthday-youtube-youre-the-best/article1579014/


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00400.x/full


http://www.rdpsd.ab.ca/Documents.php?df_id=6


http://www.youtube.com


http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1974961,00.html

YouTube Finds a Way Off Schools' Banned List - New York Times

Google is working to fine-tune a portal called YouTube for Schools, a modified YouTube site which allows educators to hand-pick the material that is and isn't available to students in their schools.

This is a welcome tool that educators have been waiting for. It is no secret that YouTube is the gateway to millions of valuable, educational videos; however, YouTube is often blocked in schools around the globe due to it's equally large stock of controversial content. In districts where budget cuts can easily widen the gap between the education levels of the wealthy and the otherwise, educators count on YouTube to be available as a free educational resource.

This article addresses in further detail why YouTube for Schools is in important step toward bringing YouTube's resources into a greater population of schools:


YouTube Finds a Way Off Schools' Banned List

Reservations In Spite of Statistics?

Did you know that over 4 billion videos per day are watched on YouTube?

A person can find all sorts of facts about YouTube on the internet. I decided that since I was using Google to do most of (ok, all) my online searching, that I might as well just go straight to YouTube's statistics page. I found some pretty amazing numbers there, and would encourage you to look, specifically at the sections of 'Traffic' and 'Social' and consider why educational institutions would choose not to take advantage of YouTube.

YouTube is not only videos, it is one of the most vast digital communities in the world. We know that digital citizenship is now a crucial life skill for students to learn; why do some schools opt to deny access to the relatively safe training platform that is YouTube?

Respectable Resource?

YouTube, the video website that has swept the world, is an incredibly multifaceted media.  Due to it’s varied nature, and relaxed posting rules, both respectable, and questionable videos can be found on the site.  Some of these videos are blocked to guest viewers, notifying them that they must create an account to verify their age and continue watching the video.  This is a feeble, and easily overcome obstacle.  Signing up for an account is simple, and there is nothing to prevent a person from falsifying their age.  With an account, YouTube is wide open.  Viewers can find thousands of videos containing adult material, both sexual and narcotic in nature. 

On the other side of the coin, there are thousands of educational and instructional videos to be found.  These videos offer assistance to viewers struggling with the quadratic formula or balancing a chemical equation.  If a viewer is interested in learning to quilt, knit or crochet, there is an abundance of helpful videos with step-by-step instructions and detailed images. 

There is also another side to this website - one that I have had some exposure to.  There are many men in the world, who are self-proclaimed handymen.  They don’t need how-to books, they don’t need manuals, and they certainly don’t need the help of any professionals.  These men are capable of almost anything.  That is, until they find themselves halfway through the job without any idea how to repair what they’ve torn apart.  Repairing drywall and plumbing are two areas where this tends to happen.  Wives, turn your husbands towards the computer, for help is near!  There are many videos showing how to repair drywall, how to plumb kitchen sinks, and even how to install sub-panels to circuit boards. 

While there are many pros and cons to YouTube, the accessibility of such an abundance of informative and educational videos is simply too much to pass up.  Discretion needs to be taught to younger viewers, and parents must be aware of the dangers that are present.

Hello, and Welcome!

You have stumbled upon the Media Literacy project that myself and a classmate have created for our Young Adult Literature course.  We have selected the topic of YouTube, and we will be looking at the pros and cons of this video website, why it is so popular and the effect that it has on today's youth.  You will find a few of our thoughts in the posts to follow, and many articles and videos to support our opinions.