Friday

20 Discover YouTube and sites that allow users to upload and share videos

Within the past few years, online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is the top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily.

YouTube makes it easy to use video clips to enhance a class project, Power Point presentation, or class lesson. While copyright issues are on-going for a video sharing site such as YouTube, as long as you’re just showing the clips to your class and not airing it for a wide audience, it most likely falls within Fair Use and can be used as long as you give credit where credit is due.

Once you create a free account you can upload your own videos, create a favorites page, or make your own channel. There are websites, like AuthorStream, that let you convert Power Point presentations into videos for uploading. YouTube limits the length and size of a clip: it can’t be longer than 10 minutes or larger than 1024 MB.

Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials to library dominos and a video made by library school students for National Library Week. There's also the cult classic Conan the Librarian. First, let's check out the first episode of CSM Bay Vision.


See also:

  • Introducing the Book A medieval look at new technology
  • Web 2.0 Still not sure what we mean by Web 2.0? This might clear things up!
  • Library 2.0 Manifesto This is a great example of how you can use just a simple slideshow with images, words, and sound to create an engaging video.

Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer. :)

Discovery Exercise:

  1. Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
  2. Create a blog post about your experience. 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 componets of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?
  3. OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the for "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.

Discovery Resources:

NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light Internet usage times.

NEXT UP: #21 Podcasts

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