SchoolFinder Blog

YouTube Versus TeacherTube

Good afternoon. I am wearing a striped hoodie from UrbanOutfitters. And feeling like an urbanite. While I write this post, I am listening to hardcore rap music. The genre of music is pretty mandatory as I am employed by an educational company…

The title of the post was almost “an arrogant review of teachertube.com”. Why? For one, I am arrogant. Extremely. And very sensitive. Also, the term “in my humble opinion” or IMHO for short is overused. At least I feel so. In my humble opinion.

Yesterday, the WSJ had an article in the Personal Journal section titled “Teachers Tap Video-Sharing In the Classroom”. Here’s a link. The article reviews two video-sharing site for teachers and schools.

1) TeacherTube.com 2) SchoolTube.com.

I have not yet taken a look at SchoolTube. For now, we’ll start with TeacherTube.

Some important links for you: homepage, about the company, ton of press, (hideous looking) blog for teachers, product blog.

And now, I will tell you what me thinks. FYI, admittedly, I cannot write well. Or parallel park. Or doing anything right for that matter. However, I do have a bit of experience with web video. Here’s proof.

Here’s what I like:

1) I think the concept is great. Education is a serious matter. That’s why I decided to work here. It is great when the proper attention is given to teachers and schools.

2) This fills an important need; video-sharing can be very useful in the classroom. And many schools do block access to sites like YouTube. For the right reasons. In fact, when I sent school principals a WASL clip on YouTube, they were unable to watch it due to firewall restrictions.

3) A bit of information; back in my YouTube days, I emailed their product team and encouraged them to add an “Education” channel. They replied saying it was a good idea. (I saved the emails in case you want proof!) Sure enough, it’s a year later, and now I notice that YouTube has added “education” as a channel. And I never received a royalty check!

4) My favorite part of TeacherTube is that many videos include the name/location of the school in the video details. For example, this video is from the Oberon Middle School in Colorado.

Here’s what I don’t like:

1) The name of the site. Brilliant. Not. How many Tubes do we need? GodTube, TeacherTube, SchoolTube. What if someone decides to create a video-sharing site for Christian schools? Will the name then be GodSchoolTube.com?

Where is the creativity in the education space? The UI/Name/Everything else is simply a carbon copy of YouTube. Education needs to be at the forefront of originality. Not the hind leg.

This is more than just semantics. If the name of the site makes ME cringe, how will it ever appeal to a teenager who shops at Abercrombie and has Timbaland streaming from her iPod?

2) If teachers really want to have a video sharing site for education, why not work with YouTube to enhance their education channel. For example, maybe YouTube can make an education domain that does not have access to the rest of the site. Google would like to be a player in the education space. As would Yahoo. And Microsoft.

People need to play the roles they were cut out for. Google needs to focus on technology. Teachers should focus on education. Not the reverse.

My good friend, Gchat soul mate, gorgeous teacher and uber-educational + technology blogger Vicki Davis has YouTube clips on her site all the time. Link. If it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for me!

3) TeacherTube is ad-supported. (Yup; I am not sponsoring the site!) The ads unfortunately are anti-education! And an embarrassment as well. Nothing like a little scandalous ad on a site that is supposed to be the Kosher YouTube! Even YouTube has higher quality ads than this!

a) University of Phoenix Online is all over the place. Yes; they are into education etc. Here are the FACTS: UOP overall graduation rate is 16%. The national average is 55%. And University of Phoenix Online? Their graduation rate is 4%! Ouch.

b) Check out the screen shot of TeacherTube. That’s an ad for a get rich scheme site. Check them out. The landing page has a guy without his shirt on. The guy does have nice pecs. Still, I doubt schools would be excited with the association.

What do you think?