Journal #3

Video In the Age of Participation
By: Glen Bull

Glen Bull writes of the wide spread usage of streaming videos on the internet. He describes how National Geographic is capable of having a camera film a certain area of Botswana, then this piece of footage is able to be sent one third of a way around the world to North America to be viewed on T.V. Bull also brings up that this “Peter’s Pond” can be searched on YouTube to discover that there are may devoted fans who post their favorite clip of the show or post themselves discussing the show.
The article goes on to discuss how teachers are scrambling to find portions of film that are educational but do not take up large portions of time with other parts of the video that are not. He also briefly discusses how the ability to download clips of a movie or television program has made film projectors and even DVD players a thing of the past.
One of the interesting portions of this article is the discussion of DEN. DEN is the Discovery Education Network’s new experiment that allows teachers and students to upload, edit and remix licensed unitedstreaming content. This gives teachers the chance to see what their colleagues are using as teaching materials and even have the opportunity to use a few of them in their own classrooms.
The first question I have for myself is would I ever edit and create a video to show my class then post it for all other teachers to see. I feel that I would be very skeptical of my ability to create a video, but if I did create one that I felt would be beneficial for others then I would definitely post it. Also, I would most likely search the site for new and fresh ideas to bring to my own classroom.
The second question I have involves the use of YouTube. This site has everything ranging from clips from a National Geographic show to someone’s home video of Grandma at Christmas. I am curious as to how the reliability will be of this video network. For my personal opinion I would not use a YouTube video as a resource for a college class. I would search for the clip in other more reliable locations. Also as a future teacher I am not sure that I would use a clip from YouTube and show it in class unless I was absolutely certain that it was going to be positive education.