YouTube Rocks

So the highlight of my first day at SXSWedu was the panel called "Meet the Educational Stars of YouTube" featuring YouTube EDU's Angela Lin, TED Ed's Logan Smalley, Smart Girls' Meredith Walker, and the ever funny genius/writer of Crash Course, John Green.

I was familiar with John Greene purely from Tumblr experiences (yes I am 24 years old and am active in the Tumblr community and have been for about 8 years), but had no real knowledge of any of the other panelists.

Angela Lin moderated the conversation and has some part (can't remember!) within YouTube's education department which provides a channel purely for educational content. My school has actually just recently made Youtube.com/edu the ONLY YouTube option that we have.

Logan Smalley works to coordinate and produce educational videos in conjunction with TED-Ed, of TED Talks that we are all familiar with. What he does is unique in that he has created a community of educators who help them to create and innovate their content.

Meredith Walker was awesome because she is Amy Poehler's best friend and Amy Poehler is like, my hero/ spirit animal/ whatever. No but seriously, Meredith produces all of the videos that are a part of Smart Girls. This is a channel created by Amy Poehler and friends to empower young girls and make it okay to be smart, educated, and an all around good person.

John Green is a man of many hats and has written books that most of your students are probably obsessed with: The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and An Abundance of Katherines. He also produces CrashCourse with his brother Hank where they teach mini-lessons over different AP level curriculum (GET SOME ONE WHO SPEAKS SPANISH!!!).

The panel had amazing things to say and were hands down the most inspiring group I had seen all day, beating out the nation's 2012 Teacher of the Year even. As a teacher at a school where we incorporate and rely on technology in our classrooms, much of what was said really impacted me.

Mr. Green commented amidst a great discussion that educational videos are NOT meant to replace teaching, but are made to supplement learning. He also mentioned that he believes that we NEED teachers and physical classrooms now more than ever, and that sites like Coursera will ultimately not be successful.

This is something that I only wish I could convey to the parents who become enraged with videos that we are posting on our online classroom portals. We constantly are being told that we are "not teaching anymore" and that we need to start "lecturing more in class". WHAT?! Parents are nuts, but we already all know that.

Anyway, please check out these three channels. I have spent my night perusing all three (it is 1 am) and now am inspired to create my own videos, especially since Spanish videos that don't suck are not easy to find.

As far as starting to create your own videos, the panel agreed that you need an idea for a channel, not just one video. You want students to go down into a rabbit hole of knowledge, rather than watch one video and forget about it. Mr. Green's example was Gangnam Style and that he "doesn't care what Psy does next". A perfect example.