Evaluating Youtube (evaluate a social networking tool)

YouTube in Education:

Everyone who uses YouTube will know that YouTube is just not about music it has so many resources in such varied collection of subjects that it makes YouTube as a very good social media which can be used in classrooms. Some points which I have identified which make YouTube a very good teaching tool are as follows:

• The videos are sometimes of only 10-15 minutes which makes it easier to show in the classrooms at the end as a re-cap of the session.
• The students can get a different view point on the same topic than the teacher talking all the time which may help them to understand the topic much better.
• we can embed the links from the YouTube videos in Moodle, Blogs etc. to create a collection of videos for the learners or users.

Even though they are some good points of using YouTube in classes they are some disadvantages also:

• Just showing the videos is not sufficient as the lessons become one sided. The tutor should leave sometime after the video for questions and answers to discus the video and to check learning.
• Students can sometimes turn off their minds when videos are shown taking it as a break. We can avoid that by asking students to jot down three important points from the video while watching which will keep them attentive.