The Perils and Possibilities of YouTube

How to make YouTube appropriate for the classroom

digital citizenship and students onlineYouTube can provide students and educators with hundreds of powerful educational videos that can deepen learning, and we cover finding those videos elsewhere. But a lot of times actually showing those videos to your students requires navigating a minefield of irrelevant results, unpleasant comments and ads featuring people who are going to catch pneumonia unless they put a shirt on.

But it can be done: let’s look at ways to make YouTube appropriate for the classroom.

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To lock or not to lock

School approaches to filtering internet content

school approaches to filtering internet contentAs social media,Youtube, and gaming become more educationally relevant, how do we leverage their educational potential while keeping student data safe and teaching them digital citizenship?

Lock it down! “We need to keep everyone safe.”

Open it up! “It’s how the real world operates.”

I’ve heard strong arguments for both sides of the coin and have seen successes and challenges in both cases.

Continue reading “To lock or not to lock”