Hi there!
How are you all? Today I am going to talk about a very famous tool we explored in the lab on Wednesday…It has been the last one we introduced this semester… Ladies and gentlemen, here comes YouTube!!!
Thank God this time I cannot say I had never heard about it before; I visit this website regularly and my mail box is often full with messages containing links to funny videos placed there. Anyway, I had never thought to register, probably because I was just interested in watching the videos rather than in posting them.
I am not going to spend many words on the videos Sarah put online for the “e-tivity 7” as I have already left my comments in the forum; I would just like to say we have a lot to learn from them, and of course I am not only talking about the language :-)
Thank God this time I cannot say I had never heard about it before; I visit this website regularly and my mail box is often full with messages containing links to funny videos placed there. Anyway, I had never thought to register, probably because I was just interested in watching the videos rather than in posting them.
I am not going to spend many words on the videos Sarah put online for the “e-tivity 7” as I have already left my comments in the forum; I would just like to say we have a lot to learn from them, and of course I am not only talking about the language :-)
The impressions I had clicking around on YouTube are more or less the same as those I had when we explored the blogosphere, flickr and del.icio.us.: this website is a huge container filled with loads of material!! And unfortunately, good stuff is not always easy to spot.
Nevertheless, I am sure YouTube can be useful to improve my language skills since it can be a great chance to listen to some English. It can also help me learn how to do some things I am not familiar with…I am thinking for example about those videos Sarah put on our course blog to guide us through “Bloglines”: I could not go to the lesson in the lab that day, so those videos were simply vital to me ;-)
However, as is well known, on YouTube you also find pretty silly stuff, like those videos taken with mobiles by students (or should we say "baby-gangs"?) during the lessons. I think one of the negative sides of this website is that you can post almost everything you want there, which means also a lot of rubbish. So you'd better watch out and always be critical!
Nevertheless, I am sure YouTube can be useful to improve my language skills since it can be a great chance to listen to some English. It can also help me learn how to do some things I am not familiar with…I am thinking for example about those videos Sarah put on our course blog to guide us through “Bloglines”: I could not go to the lesson in the lab that day, so those videos were simply vital to me ;-)
However, as is well known, on YouTube you also find pretty silly stuff, like those videos taken with mobiles by students (or should we say "baby-gangs"?) during the lessons. I think one of the negative sides of this website is that you can post almost everything you want there, which means also a lot of rubbish. So you'd better watch out and always be critical!
I was just wondering…Thanks to YouTube some weeks ago the German police managed to prevent a school-massacre; the two guys who had planned it had posted a video where they explained their intentions. If this website had not existed, maybe nobody would have found out what was about to happen.
I often ask myself why videos have become so fashionable lately…A couple of years ago nobody would have cared about them. And I also ask myself which role everyone’s right to privacy plays in websites like YouTube (IF it actually plays a role); I mean, if someone films me and then puts the video online without my permission, can they be prosecuted if I report them?
I was quite happy when Sarah introduced us this tool, though. So far I have been surfing through YouTube just for fun and I have never thought about it as an alternative way to improve my English. I guess I will keep an eye on it to see if I find something interesting and helpful (the I-Rack video was simply awesome!)
Ok, I hope it was not too long this time :-)
See you all in class!
Eleonora
6 commenti:
Hi Eleonora!
I’ve found your post really interesting and stimulating also because you managed to raise lots of burning issues! For instance, your comment about the negative consequences for our own privacy is really thought-provoking and, at the same time, scaring…I had never thought about this danger before! Probably, George Orwell was a visionary at his time: The Big Brother is always watching us. But the point is still the same: the potential of these tool has to be exploited wisely otherwise they may rebound on us…
Hence, I don’t want to dismiss them totally and, as I said to Anna, I’m curious about the possible implications for our learning process. After all, as you said in your post, we had already had the possibility to benefit from the tutorial videos That Sarah posted in the course blog to help us through the e-tivities. Moreover, TeacherTube was self-explanatory with this respect: let’s think about the possibility to post course materials and videos on the Web (for free) or to share the results of class project. You can basically do everything you want!
See you soon
Ale
Hi Eleonora,
I agree with you about both the positive and negative sides if YouTube. I’m sure, if we put some effort into it, it can be a nice and new tool for improving listening and comprehending skills.
The other thing you took into consideration was even more interesting. You wrote that thanks to YouTube police were supposed to track some young weirdoes and that if this webpage didn’t exist no one could ever prevent this.
Well I wonder, and I feel that it is the other way around…if these guys really wanted to do it, they would probably never put it on the Internet, don’t you think? Isn’t this just an influence of what has already happened so many times and some perverted attempt to bring attention?
I don’t know, maybe your point of view on this problem is better, after all the police did stop them, right☺?
Have a good week! Nina
Hi Nina!
Yes, if we think logically we may think they would not have posted any video on YouTube if they had really wanted to do what they had planned. I was just ponting out the fact that thanks to their desperate attempt to catch attention the police managed to find out what was about to happen. Anyway, I find the whole story very, very sad...Some parents fear to send their children to school now...
See you!
Hi Eleonora,
it's funny that you should mention privacy-related issues about YouTube, because that kind of thing really happened to me! As you noticed, I put up a link to a YouTube video which features myself... And I was told about it by a friend who saw it. I didn't know that it was online. The guy who made the video is not really a friend of mine, more an aquaintance, and didn't ask me nor any of us if he could put up the video. We knew him and we saw him filming around, but strictly speaking, he wasn't 'authorized' to put up the clip.
But he did it. And we didn't complain. Actually we thanked him, because, well, the video's not that bad (provided one is into our kind of music in the first place, otherwise it'll always sound horribel anyway!...) and we liked to have it online, and nobody had thought about it before it was done.
So in the end it all turns out fine, right? I guess your question is relevant though, because let's face it: anybody could be filming just about anybody else doing pretty much anyting they do. And it mught be not cool as it ws in me case. Maybe somebody doesn't like it, and I agree they should be entitled to decide about themselves being online or not.
I don't really know is that's legal, nor if the law says something specific about it.
My impression is that, for now, the legislations all around the world are still a bit hazy on the matter, and that may be because very often thay make use of home video and YouTube clips as evidence in trials and stuff. So, they know that the citizens should be allowed to control the videos which go online, but on the other hand they realise it's pretty useful to have everybody watching over everybiody else...!
So look out: finally BigBrother IS watching you ;)
Hi Eleonora!!
I heard about those guys in Germany,too. Sometimes the police is quick enough to avoid massacres but, unfortunately, it's not always like that. Have you heard of this student in Finland? I'm sure you did. He killed 8 people at his school and himself and it's so scary he anounced everything on youtube the day before. It's too bad those kind of people abuse youtube for this purpose (I said that before in someone else's comment). What can you do about that? Someone will have to invent another tool in order to avoid criminal intentions. Luckily Sarah created our own group so that we can be sure to be safe from all that bad stuff, at least for that discussion group.
I thought about someone putting a video of myself on youtube, too. I think I'd totally freak out. I don't want myself to be on youtube without my permission. So I guess we just have to be very selective when choosing our friends ;-).
See you in class.
Caroline
Hi Eleonora!
As I said to Alessia I'm very sorry for the delay but i forgot my pc at home this week and didn't have time to come to the lab.
Anyway,Fortunately this time we all knew Yuotube:-)
I haven't heard about the two guys in Germany!Great!
In this last years Youtube has become a very "discussed"tool because of the problems with videos about bullism or things klike this..this is very bad,but you know there are lots of people that like to to these stupid and silly things:-(Something should be done to avoid this kind of problem.As Caroline said in her comment I find it a bit annoying that anyone could upload a video with you and all the people on the Web can watch it!!These are very negative aspects.But Youtube is also such a funny "place"..some videos are really awesome!!And what a great chance if we can use it for "educative" purposes!!
I think that some control should be soon done,but I hope Youtube would not be closed!
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