Sunday, March 1, 2009

TeacherTube


In the event you don’t know about TeacherTube, be sure to check it out. The authors of the site write: “Our goal is to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos. We seek to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.”

The site explains: “TeacherTube was the idea of Jason Smith, a 14-year veteran educator. Jason has been a teacher, coach, campus administrator and district administrator in public schools. He asked the question, "Why can't teachers, students, and schools utilize the power of the read/write web for learning?" To overcome barriers, he decided to just create a site and get started trying to help. He turned to his brother, Adam, who is a younger, digital native, with technical skills. Adam used his skills to develop the site and found a web host. Soon, Jason's wife, Jodie, joined the team to start populating the site with videos and help improve the communication. She too has 14 years of experience in education as a classroom teacher, campus technology integrator, and district curriculum coordinator.”

TeacherTube claims among its benefits the following:
Upload, tag and share videos worldwide
Upload support files to attach educational activities, assessments, lesson plans, notes…
Browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members
Find, join and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests

Schools generally sanction the use of the site, and as the authors note: “TeacherTube staff review flagged sites and will remove any inappropriate posts. With more collegial commentary and discussion through messaging and responses, the quality of this resource will only increase.”

Please check the site for more details: http://www.teachertube.com/ and let us know if you find the site useful and if so, how.

Image: site logo

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! what a great idea, I wish I had thought of it. I found some very funny things such as the walk through and observations or the erasers video and some very useful videos such as Mr. Duey's fractions rap and the perimeter rap. I think this site has HUGE potential, possibly providing substitute plans or just review on the morning announcements (if your school has tv). I think I will show this to the staff of people I work with and see if they like it or can use it.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Travis, this is a very cool site! There are so many valuable resources here! I think this is an excellent place to find supplemental video materials. There are also many neat videos that could be used to introduce lessons. There are good examples of how to include multiple intelligences in your instruction as well. I loved all the math songs and Schoolhouse Rock videos! I will pass this on to my colleagues too!

Anonymous said...

After watching three videos, one about Marco Polo, another about World Math Day and then another about doing a skate board trick, I could see how this site could keep you captivated for quite a while! It was great fun and interesting to watch to think how students could put their energies into creating something for this site. I believe students could get be very creative, organized and work as a team to create something school related. Of course, I would want it to be part of their History class, to promote their further interest in History and to show off something they have learned and created. The students have written research papers and created a project to go with their topic about ancient Egypt's civilization, what a fantastic place to show off their knowledge and hard work!! I like where you don't have to leave names in the video created if you do not wish to. I'm sure parents would like protection for their children if they submitted something for TeacherTube. Being able to show students such vibrant and useful videos created by fellow students and teachers is truly awesome! It could be part of the curriculum or built in as a reward to watch and then eventually create a video of their own. I will be checking TeahcerTube out often!

Anonymous said...

Trying to leave my name for the anonymous. Keep choosing the wrong one, I thought it was Name/URL but it's not working. The comment after Christine was me-Kathy V.

Anonymous said...

I had not heard of this website until taking this class. It appears to be a good resource especially when youtube is blocked by many schools. I think if you are looking for something specific to aid teaching an objective then it is a great idea which is also free. However, It think it would be helpful if there were sub categories that you could navigate for grade level and topic. Maybe I missed this part.....
It also reminded me of another great video website, unitedstreaming.com. Although you have to pay for this, it has a lot of useful videos and teaching ideas and printables. They do allow you to have a 30 day free trial if anyone is interested.I have used this a lot to aid learning of concepts with my class and will explore teacher tube more to see what it can offer.

Anonymous said...

This is the first I am hearing of TeacherTube! In the very short time I have been exposed to it, I can tell that it is a useful resource, especially in the Special Education field. I have colleagues who have made short videos of just their hands doing specific tasks (tying shoes, making a puzzle, etc.) for children with Autism to watch and learn from. I will have to look through TeacherTube and see if there are similar videos that can be used in the same way. What a time saver... and also great for parents to use as follow through at home!

~Jill

Lisa said...

Unitl now I haven't heard of this site, but I checked it out and it seems that this site would be a valuable tool in the classroom. I think its a great idea that there is a site that has educational videos for teachers to use. It appears to be a little more user friendly than youtube when you are looking the educational video.

gretchen said...

Super fun.
I still think you-tube for obvious reasons as more out there-- but this is definately helpful if that is not available.
Need to explore it more.
Gretchen

Anonymous said...

Like everyone else, I've never heard of this site. It's so nice to know about this resource where it's a bit more censored than youtube, so you easily find educational material, without having to filter through all the junk that is on youtube!

Anonymous said...

What a creative and unique web site. I too had never heard of it nor had any teachers in my school. Most of the videos are goofy but in a good way - they still get a point across and certainly capture one's attention. The video on what NOT to do for a PowerPoint presentation was very timely and so true! I also watched the one on Walkthroughs - that was funny and got the point across. The teacher rapping on perimeters was good. I have to say though - you have to be in the right mood to watch these - it is silly humor but creative and unique. It definitely has a good purpose and place in teaching.

Anonymous said...

I liked browsing through this website. They have some nice cooking demos I could use in my future classroom. Sometimes showing a quick demo on a video can be more exciting then me doing it!

Anonymous said...

I was aware of the existence of this website, it was promoted by the administration at my school as an alternative to YouTube which is blocked for obvious reason. Although I haven't explored TeacherTube as much as I would have liked I did find many videos that could be used in a lesson, or at least to motivate students at the beginning of a lesson, as a hook, when a new topic is introduced. I feel this site has great potential and will continue to improve over time.

Kristen said...

I really enjoy using teacher tube. I used to use youtube.com at school to watch educational videos with my children. Unfortunately, our district blocked the website and I thought I wouldn’t be able to show videos any longer. Our music teacher told us about the site and my class loves it! During their free time the students search for videos relating to what we are studying in Science and Reading.

Liz R. said...

I also have never heard of this site. This site has huge potential. I would like to see each link organized by discipline tabs, so it would take less time to find my content material whether it is video, audio or lesson plans. I found it to be time consuming to navigate using only the search tool. I also found an extremely inappropriate picture posted, so I was not as thrilled about this site as others. The creators need to search and remove inappropriate material more often!

Ashley said...

Teacher Tube is an excellent resource for teachers and students because it relates to educational issues and events. As others have described using You Tube in a classroom can be a bit tricky as you never know what may be updated or changed. I know in an elementary school classroom I wasn't using You Tube because some of the material was inappropriate; however, I'll use Teacher Tube a lot. I also think that Teacher Tube allows students to watch videos that are age appropriate. I'd even let the students watch this at home and report back to the class.

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