The Power of YouTube

I want to tell you a story today that helped me to understand the power of YouTube.  It begins with this guy.  He is an eight year old who is into dragons, Legos, Star Wars and most recently Rubik's Cubes (all which are in this picture).  About six months ago, this young guy ran across an old Rubik's Cube in his grandmother's basement.  He asked some questions about it, then proceeded to mess with it a little while.  He ended up taking it home with him later that day.  With the influence of his older siblings, he was watching some funny videos on YouTube and a picture came up with a Rubik's cube.  He was intrigued, so he began searching.  Over the next week he became hooked and learned to solve his first cube completely by watching YouTube and messing with that old find from grandma's basement.  He is definitely hooked on the three-dimensional puzzles and has begun a collection of varies types.  Some he still goes to YouTube to solve and others he uses what he already knows to figure out.

I had asked him to go on video to describe his experiences, but he was a bit too shy (hard to imagine with that mischievous grin).  He did share some thoughts with me about the step-by-step process and the algorithm (yes, that was his word) that is used to solve the device, but the think that really caught me we this quote:  "It is easy, you can search how to do lots of things on YouTube."  As you know some of those "things" are not so good, especially for eight year olds, so please be sure you are supervising kids online.  However, isn't it amazing that this guy already knows how to teach himself (sort of) with the power of technology.  It begs the question of how we harness this power in our schools.  Are we doing enough with this resource?  Are we teaching our students to find answers and help them think through skills with YouTube?  Do we teach them to use it positively and not just for funny cat videos?

Hopefully, we do recognize this tool for what it can be used for.  I'd love to hear your ideas, but here are just a few thoughts to get the mind going:

1. Create classroom instruction videos
2. Locate video clips related to content areas
3. Have student create their own instructional videos
4. Research "how to" about anything

Feel free to leave comments or thoughts on YouTube uses in the classroom.