YouTube in the Classroom

 by Sanjuanita Gutierrez

 

YouTube in the Classroom Historical Background  Relevance to education Glossary of Terms Start-up Costs Key-players, gurus, experts Chad Hurley, CEO Chad Hurley is the CEO of YouTube, as well as one of the co-founders of the company.  The company was founded in February 2005. Mr. Hurley is responsible for making YouTube one of the most highly trafficked web sites, serving billions of videos around the world.   His overall vision for YouTube is to keep the process of watching and sharing videos easy for everyone.  His responsibilities include overseeing the business development, marketing and the operations of the company.  He has created a simple interface that lets users to interact and share their videos around the world, as well as designed YouTube’s logo.  Mr. Hurley received his B.A. in Fine Arts at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (YouTube, 2007).   Steve Chen, CTO Steve Chen is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of YouTube as well as one of the co-founders of the company. Mr. Chen was influential in creating YouTube and has led it through the Google acquisition for $1.65 billion. Mr. Chen is the key technologist and is credited for developing the companies’ data centers, as well as helping to create the most popular web sites.  He oversees the areas of both engineering and product development, which include managing site operations.  Mr. Chen studied computer science at the University of Illinois (YouTube, 2007).   Jawed Karim Jawed Karim was the third co-founder of YouTube.  Mr. Karim says that he was the one that had suggested the idea to create the company.  However, Mr. Karim decided to leave YouTube to pursue graduate computer studies at Standford.  Mr. Karim was also an engineer at PayPal (Hopkins, J., 2006)   Both Chad Hurley and Steve Chen had an impact on PayPal.  Chad Hurley was the first user-interface designer at PayPal, where he had a fundamental role on its development. He designed the PayPal logo that is still in use today.  Steven Chen was a product engineer at PayPal, where he led development efforts and was the engineering manager on several important projects.  Charlie Rose interviews YouTube Co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.  They discussed the rise of YouTube and the future of the company (Hopkins, J.,2006). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E6E9q8Jebw   Sample Lesson Plans Tutorial Sources

 

Historical Background 

 

In the mid 20^th century, there have been several attempts to display media on computers.  However, there has not been much progress made due to the high cost and limitation of computer hardware.  In the 1970’s, some experiments were conducted that proved the feasibility of streaming media on computers (Wikipedia, 2007).

 

In the the late 1980’s computers became powerful enough to be able to display several types of media. However, there were still other issues, such as the low-latency that would interrupt the paths of the operating system.  Computer networks were still limited with the amount of streaming.  Therefore, CD-ROMs were often used to delivery of non-streaming channels (Wikipedia, 2007).  In 1982,  Discovery Education's unitedstreaming was developed and distributed by United Learning.  Unitedstreaming is a large online multimedia library of K-12 educational video, video clips and images (Stern, B & Blohm, C 2005).

 

In the 1990's, the network bandwidth improved and other changes such as the increase access of networks, the use of standard communication protocols (TACP/IP, HTTP and HTML), and the commercialization of the internet, were made.  These upgrades to computer networking and the increased power of home computers and operating systems have made streaming media practical and even more affordable to the average consumer (Wikipedia, 2007).       

 

In 1994, streaming videos ran over Mbone (Multicast backbone) network.  However the general public did not have access to it until April 1995.  It was then that progressive Networks – now RealNetworks- released a freeware software product, Real Audio, which allowed downloads and the ability to run audio clips (Lucus, B., 2001).

 

In August 1995, Xing Technologies Streamworks released the first interent streaming video, which was the first live and on-demand audio/video delivery system over the internet (Luo, V., 2000).  It was followed by VDO live from VDO Net Corporation.  In 1996, RealNetworks announced the release of RealMedia and in 1997, they announced the release of RealVideo (Lucus, B., 2001).

 

In February 2005, YouTube was founded and is currently a leader in online video.  YouTube allows users to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs and email. The idea for YouTube was conceived from a chain of events occurring in 2004, such as the Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction during the Super bowl half time event, and the Indian Ocean earthquake with the magnitude of 9.0, caused the Tsunami (Hopkins, J., 2006).  This combined with the article of “The Bit Torrent Effect" in the Wired Magazine's January 2005 issue,  led the founders to see the need for video sharing (Gannes, L, 2006).

 

The first upload was on April 24, 2005, which showed one of the co-founders Jawed Karim standing in front of elephant at the zoo (YouTube, 2007). (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nssfmTo7SZg).  In November 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google, Inc.

 

  The June 2005, YouTube was revamped by adding the four essential features (Gannes, L, 2006):

• related video recommendations,
• one-click emailing to spam a friend about a video,
• more social networking and user interactions tools like video comments and
• an external video player

 

  

Relevance to education

 

The importance in understanding why streaming media is relevant to education, comes with understanding the students and knowing their background with technology.  Most K-16 students have computer access and have experience with wesites such as, MySpace, Miniclip, unitedstreaming or YouTube, to view clips of what other users have posted.  Streaming media is a great tool to include in the curriculum.  However, there may be a few setbacks when using streaming media at school, such as the blocking of downloads (Stern, B & Blohm, C, 2005).  To alleviate this problem, some sites have made it possible for teachers to include streaming in their curriculum.  Two of those sites include YouTube's Ignite Learning and Discovery’s unitedstreaming. 

 

 YouTube’s Ignite Learning  (PRNewswire, 2007).

• Available for school districts, public and private schools
• Grade levels range from upper elementary to middle schools
• Includes Science, History, Social Studies and Math lessons
• Animation is used to connect subjects with current events

 

United Streaming (Stern, B. & Blohm, C., 2005).

• Is available in both PC and Apple computers
• Has over 2,000 educational videos
• Has more than 20,000 video clips
• K-12 video library in various subjects
• Can be searched by keywords, subject area and grade level
• Teacher materials are available such as lesson plans and quizzes with videos

 

In 2001, the United Sates passed the Children’s Internet Protection Act, commonly referred to as CIPA. This act was designed to protect children from accessing obscenity, child pornography, and other material deemed inappropriate by the federal act or even by local standards. One aspect of this law relates to funding that schools are eligible to receive to build their technology. To be eligible for these e-rate funds schools must have a “technology protection measure” in place that will block or filter inappropriate material from children (E-Rate Central, 2007). Unfortunately, these filters can even block appropriate educational content that teachers and students need to access from school. This blocking may include internet sites that offer streaming or downloading of stored video clips. So while, CIPA has had a positive impact on protecting children, it has also served to stifle some aspects of children’s education.

 

In short, streaming media is a great educational tool that can be utilized by educators.  It will actively engage students, and helping them retain information for a longer period of time. 

 

 

Glossary of Terms

 

Following is a list of YouTube Glossary terms (YouTube Glossary, 2007):

 

• Account type -  types of accounts that a user can create such as a comedian, director, guru, musician, partner and politician. 
• Active Sharing - allows the user to see who is watching the same video they are watching, or exploring the users' history.
• Audio Swap - allows the addition of music from the library of licensed songs.
• Avatar / Channel Icon - a virtual representation of the player in a game. 

 

• Buffering - A temporary storage area that allows data to play more smoothly if the connection is not fast enough. 
• Bulletin - A posting added on to a channel that can be sent out to all of the user's.

 

• Category - An area in which a video can belong to.
• CD-ROM -- A Compact Disc-Read Only Memory is a type of optical disk used for storing large amounts of data, which can be up to 1 GB.  A signal CD-ROM has the capacity to store enough memory that would equal to 700 floppy disks or 300,000 text pages.
• Channel - A user's page that contains their profile 
• Comedian - is a type of account that contains  information about thier schedule.

 

• Director -- allows the customize items and logos on thier profile page.  
• Editors' Picks - is feature videos on the home page.  

   

   

Start-up Costs

 

YouTube is a free account.  All accounts share a basic feature such as uploading, commenting, sharing and video responses.  YouTube offers four different specialized types of accounts:

 

• Director – allows the custom of items and logos on the profile page.
• Musician – allows the account holder to customized logo, enter the genre and tour date information as well as CD purchase links on the profile page
• Comedian – allows the account holder to customized logo, enter the style and show date information as well as CD purchases links on the profile page.
• Guru –allows the account holder to customized logo,enter the genre and provide links on the profile page

 

All of the videos that are uploaded to YouTube would need to have a 100MB file size limit. Thus the longer the size of the video the more compression would need to be done to fit it into that size.  It is for that reason the videos are under five minutes long and there is a ten minute length limit.   The account user can upload as many videos as they want and there is currently no limit on adding a limit of how many videos can be uploaded in the future. 

 

Key-players, gurus, experts

 

Chad Hurley, CEO

Chad Hurley is the CEO of YouTube, as well as one of the co-founders of the company.  The company was founded in February 2005. Mr. Hurley is responsible for making YouTube one of the most highly trafficked web sites, serving billions of videos around the world.   His overall vision for YouTube is to keep the process of watching and sharing videos easy for everyone.  His responsibilities include overseeing the business development, marketing and the operations of the company.  He has created a simple interface that lets users to interact and share their videos around the world, as well as designed YouTube’s logo.  Mr. Hurley received his B.A. in Fine Arts at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (YouTube, 2007).  

 

Steve Chen, CTO

Steve Chen is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of YouTube as well as one of the co-founders of the company. Mr. Chen was influential in creating YouTube and has led it through the Google acquisition for $1.65 billion. Mr. Chen is the key technologist and is credited for developing the companies’ data centers, as well as helping to create the most popular web sites.  He oversees the areas of both engineering and product development, which include managing site operations.  Mr. Chen studied computer science at the University of Illinois (YouTube, 2007).

 

Jawed Karim

Jawed Karim was the third co-founder of YouTube.  Mr. Karim says that he was the one that had suggested the idea to create the company.  However, Mr. Karim decided to leave YouTube to pursue graduate computer studies at Standford.  Mr. Karim was also an engineer at PayPal (Hopkins, J., 2006)

 

Both Chad Hurley and Steve Chen had an impact on PayPal.  Chad Hurley was the first user-interface designer at PayPal, where he had a fundamental role on its development. He designed the PayPal logo that is still in use today.  Steven Chen was a product engineer at PayPal, where he led development efforts and was the engineering manager on several important projects.  Charlie Rose interviews YouTube Co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.  They discussed the rise of YouTube and the future of the company (Hopkins, J.,2006). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E6E9q8Jebw

 

Sample Lesson Plans

 

Here are some ways that YouTube can be integrated into a lesson.

 

Lesson 1: Creating a 3-D LogoThe purpose of this lesson is to illustrate how a 3-D logo can be created using Photo shop. The student will create any logo into a 3D logo then present their creations.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVmunnv1CH4

 

Lesson 2: Presidential debate of 1960

Students will study the impact that television had on the first televised election Richard Nixon vs. John Kennedy.  The students will view a short YouTube clip to answer the question of “How did television impact the Election of 1960?”  Nixon vs. Kennedy television debate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur92R4Gvcj4

 

 Lesson 3: Searching on Google

This lesson plan shows the user how the students can quickly and effectively search Google for information.  Also to view several ways to get more results in the researched topic  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWSnfTnJy-U 

 

Tutorial

 

How to use YouTube

1. Go to YouTube’s site at www.YouTube.com 

2. Click on Log in 

3. If you do not have a log in. 

The user can click on create your YouTube account

Choose the type of account desired

Enter your email address

Create a Username  and password

Enter your postal code

Click on the radio button indicating your gender.

Enter your date of birth and

Enter the verification code shown

4. You will be sent a conformation email.

Click on the link and your account is ready to use.

5. Once you have a username and logon, you are able to view different videos.

 

How to Upload a Video

To upload a video on YouTube, follow the instructions below.  However, you can only upload videos that you have created, are under ten minutes long and are not more that 100 MB. 

 

1. Click on the upload link located on the top right hand side of the window.

2. A new window will pop up. Type the following information such as the title, description, tags, video categories, broadcast options, and sharing options.

a. Title – enter the title of your video

b. Description – add information on describing what the video is amount.

c. Tags – add key words that describe the type video to upload (i.e. educational, people, political…)

d. Video Categories – add the type of video (i.e. comedy, entertainment, music, sports, people, blogs)

e. Broadcast Options – user has the option of making the video public (viewed by everybody) or private (can be viewed by up to 25 people). 

f. Sharing Options – allows for comments, video responses and ratings. 

3. After the information has been entered, click on the “upload a video” button 

4. A new screen will come up.  Click on the Browse button to look for your video

5. Once the video has been found, click on upload video

6. The video will be available to view in a few minutes.

 

Sources

 

E-Rate Central (2007). Internet safety policies and CIPA. Retrieved July 27, 2007, from E-Rate Central Web site: http://www.e-ratecentral.com/CIPA/cipa_policy_primer.pdf 

 

 

Gannes, L (2006). Jawed Karim: How YouTube took off. Retrieved August 7, 2007, from Gigaom web site: http://gigaom.com/2006/10/26/jawed-karim-how-youtube-took-off/

 

Hopkins, J. (2006, October 11). Surprise! There's a third YouTube co-founder. USA Today. Retrieved July 27, 2007, from http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-10-11-youtube-karim_x.htm

 

Lucus, B. (2001, June). Streaming on the digital desktop. Retrieved July 13, 2007, from http://www.cbltwork.soton.ac.uk/lucas/mult/pages/append.html

 

Luo, V. (2000). Streaming Media: Opportunities and Challenges. Retrieved July 14, 2007, from http://web.ptc.org/library/proceedings/ptc2000/sessions/monday/m35/m352/

 

PRNewswire (2007). Ignite! Learning Launches YouTube Education Channel with Science, Social Studies and Current Events. Retrieved July 18, 2007 from http://sev.prnewswire.com/education/20061204/NYM11604122006-1.html

 

Stern, B. & Blohm, C. (2005). Research Shows that Students Learn More with unitedstreaming™. United Streaming. Retrieved July 14, 2007, from http://edvideo.thirteen.org/publicPages/newsArticle.cfm?news_id=93

 

Stern, B & Blohm, C (2005), Benefits. United Streaming, Retrieved July 25, 2007, from http://edvideo.thirteen.org/publicPages/benefits.cfm

 

Wikipedia (2007). Streaming media. Retrieved July 13, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_media

 

YouTube (2007). About YouTube. Retrieved July 13, 2007, from http://www.youtube.com/t/about

 

YouTube (2007). Founders.Retrieved August 7, 2007, from http://www.youtube.com/t/founders  

 

YouTube (2007). Me at the Zoo.Retrieved August 7, 2007, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw

 

YouTube Glossary (2007). Retrieved August 4, 2007 from http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=70181