When I first learned of YouTube, I think I did like many people and simply surfed through it without much thought of actually searching for usable content. I think my first exposure to some of the greatness that can be found on YouTube was at NECC2007 when in a session the presenter shared some incredible examples that he had found. From that point on, I viewed YouTube in a very different light.

Here are my four Youtube “finds”.

This first one is my “how to” video. I enjoy scrapbooking and stamping and I’m always looking to learn new techniques or to find better ways to do a technique that I already know. This particular video demonstrates how to mask when stamping.

My “fun” video is from Ron Clark and his students at the Ron Clark Academy. He was the keynote speaker and performed a little of this song at GaETC. He mentioned that it was on YouTube, so while he was speaking, I looked it up. It just makes you feel good to see kids enjoying learning like these do.

As for two videos that work in my content area (Educational Technology). This first one is title “The Machine is Us/ing Us” and is phenomenal. It’s kind of hard to describe, so I’ll just let it speak for itself.

“Did you know 2.0″ is another fabulous video that has been around for a while and went completely viral. It all began as a power point for a high school faculty meeting and has since been done, re-done, and now animated by Xplane.

I am currently working with an elementary teacher on using iPods with ELL students to assist them with language acquisition skills, especially in Math. She ran across this video, which is such an incredible example of what can be found on TeacherTube as a resource for students. She told me that the kids, 5th graders, loved it.

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I have created quite a few instructional videos on “how to” use this application or that, but I haven’t ever published them to TeacherTube. I think I’ve never done it because when I make these videos, I tend to specialize them specifically for teachers in our district. The next time I make a video, I’ll have to keep in mind to make it more general so I can post it to TeacherTube.

I know we have students in the district producing videos that could certainly be published on TeacherTube. I would love to see kids doing book reviews and posting those. That would be a great way for other students to learn about great books to read!