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#6 You too can Youtube

2009 August 6
by naomi

If you’ve ever seen a YouTube video like the one below, you’ve experienced video sharing.

The good, the bad, and the illegally downloaded are on YouTube for all to see, which is one reason many districts and libraries block YouTube. Another reason is bandwidth—like music, video is a bandwidth hog. We recommend you complete this exercise during light Internet usage times.

YouTube revolutionized the way video is shared on the Internet by making it easy to upload and share videos. Other video sites have popped up, including Google Video, TeacherTube (for educators), Yahoo Videos and many others. Even Flickr has jumped on the video wave.

Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You’ll find everything from 1970s TV commercials and 60s music videos to home repair videos and software how-to videos.   Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot of stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer.

Why should you know about video sharing?

It’s very popular
According to PEW (don’t you just love PEW?), the share of online adults who watch video on video -sharing sites was at 71% as of July 2011. That’s up from 66% just one year earlier.

*heart*
People love video. You love video. Admit it. And you’ve had someone, somewhere, send you a link to an online video. That’s the sharing aspect.

There’s more than one way to share
Of course, there are other ways of sharing. By embedding the video on this page, I’ve shared it with you. I can also share it on other social sites, like Facebook, Digg and others. YouTube has these handy “share” buttons that make this whole sharing business pretty easy. If you want more information about embedding, see this blog entry:
Embed Your YouTube Videos With Cool Skin Flix Skins.

It’s social
Most video sharing sites have social networking features beyond just sharing video with the world. Many sites allow users to “subscribe” to other user’s profiles, allowing them to join that user’s network and keep up with new video from those users. Many sites also allow users to create their own “channel”, which they can use to showcase their videos in a customized manner. (Check out these channels: The Library of Congress , The American Library Association, and The New York Public Library.) And let’s not forget about tagging (which we’ll cover in the next method) — users can usually add their own tags to videos on these sites, allowing everyone to explore videos with similar tags and/or connect their own videos with a particular tag. (To view tags in YouTube, click the “more info” link.)

Trash and treasure
Of course, you’ll also find a lot of stuff not worth watching. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the video sites have to offer. You can see your favorite band playing live (somewhere, somebody recorded it), or catch an interview with an actor you like, or groan over so bad they’re good movie clips (“Nobody puts Baby in the corner“, anyone?).

How Libraries are using Video
Think about the possibility of sharing library information via video. Lots of libraries are doing this already.

  • promote a program (Round Rock Public Library’s Sail Away with Books Reading Program)
  • introduce your library to the community
  • and much, much more (here’s where Michael Stephens posts to his blog about YouTube and Libraries — it’s a great place to keep up with current discussion regarding libraries and YouTube)

And here’s a video created for the TexShare Databases that you might have also seen:

Discovery Exercise:

  1. Explore YouTube or TeacherTube and find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
  2. Create a blog post about your experience titled “Method 6”. What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or components of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?

OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog — from the video’s page, copy the “Embed” or “Embeddable player” code and paste it in your blog, but be sure to paste the code into the “edit html” mode of a new post. Once you’ve done that, save the post. You can then return to the post and add text before and/or after the embedded video. (About.com has some illustrated instructions on how to do this, if you’d like to see them.) (Also, for future knowledge, if you’re ever working on a regular Web page, or on another type of blog, just remember that you can embed videos as long as you are able to paste the html embed code into the actual html code for that page or blog post.)

More information for the curious

Want to make your own videos? Find out how:

Want more in-depth information about using video to promote your library? TechSoup has some great articles:

Have some time to hear a truly fascinating lecture about YouTube presented by Dr. Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University? (He’s the creator of the Machine is Us/ing Us video that you watched at the beginning of this program. If you thought it was good, you owe it to yourself to watch this lecture!)

Feeling brave?
Make your own video and upload it to YouTube, Google Video or another video sharing site of your choice. If you’re able to add tags to your video, add the tag “TSLAC2.0”. Then, link it in the comments section below because we all want to see it!

Finished learning this Two-Stepping Method? When you’re ready, move on to Method 7.

17 Responses leave one →
  1. Amy Wadowsky permalink
    October 1, 2009

    Here is a video of my dog – Shenanigans!
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/43128997@N03/3971993233/

  2. October 14, 2009

    This was so much fun! Plus I loved learning about Windows Movie Maker.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfIz6BNN6Ao&feature=player_profilepage

  3. October 16, 2009

    This was a great method and so easy.

    The only problem with YouTube is that it stops loading periodically.

  4. October 16, 2009

    Bandwidth, we could all use a little more when it comes to YouTube!

  5. Civille Brown permalink
    October 30, 2009

    This is so interesting. I am learning sooooo much! Enjoy.
    Civille

  6. October 30, 2009

    Sorry, I left the wrong info for accessing my very first video ever!

  7. naomi permalink
    October 30, 2009

    Thanks for the video, Civille! And it’s neat how your name here in the comments area is also the link to your Youtube video! Thanks again for sharing that with us.

  8. November 20, 2009

    I enjoyed working with Youtube. I did record a blurb about HPU and posted it on YouTube. It was fairly easy!

  9. Tina Billman permalink
    November 29, 2009

    My favorite video site: http://www.trutv.com/ — not educational, not always appropriate for children, but I find it very entertaining.

    I would like to make (or encourage teachers to make) videos for Teacher Tube.

  10. Mary permalink
    February 13, 2010

    Half-way through
    HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!

  11. Demetria Williams permalink
    February 18, 2010

    I have looked at teachertube and this is a very good ‘tube for learning something new and see what other teachers have posted.
    I enjoy looking at the library videos.

  12. February 24, 2010

    I uploaded this video of me performing my own personal poetry at the It’s a Grind Cafe in Dallas, Texas to this website. This is the blog:
    http://justindavidtate.blogspot.com/
    Here’s the video:

  13. Linda Gray permalink
    March 1, 2010

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV4s1bwvwtI
    I made this last month using my daughters camera, but I don’t think I ever embedded it. Now I have! 🙂

  14. naomi permalink
    March 5, 2010

    That’s great that you uploaded the video to YouTube – congrats!! I tried to view it but it was marked as private – but that’s perfectly okay – I’m just glad that you got to upload a video and play around with YouTube! 🙂 Thanks for the comment!

  15. naomi permalink
    March 5, 2010

    Hi Justin – I went to your blog and viewed the embedded video – great job! Thank you so much for sharing that with us!

  16. Albert Chambers permalink
    August 19, 2011

    My ancient workroom computer is having a hard time working with video. Luckily, we’re supposed to be getting new computers when we move into our new library!
    http://youtu.be/mGuYyW2Gciw

  17. Albert Chambers permalink
    August 19, 2011

    Amusing. I can link to youtube here in the comments, but I can’t do it on Blogger.

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