EDUCATORS are giving YouTube - long dismissed as a storehouse of whimsical, time-wasting and occasionally distasteful videos - another look.
As Google, YouTube's parent company, fine-tunes a portal that lets schools limit students' access to selected content, the video-sharing website is gaining popularity as a trove of free educational material.
US Schools commonly block access to YouTube, shielding students from the irresistible distractions of, say, the cat in a T-shirt playing a piano, or worse. So in December, Google started YouTube for Schools, offering schools the ability to select the videos they want, linked only to other related educational videos.
Advertisement: Story continues below
The program gives schools the ability to allow access to the YouTube EDU educational library, and to specific videos within its own network - while blocking the general site.
That has enabled teachers to bring educational videos from YouTube into classrooms. Slowly schools are removing barriers.
John Connolly, educational technology director for the Chicago Public Schools, said: ''We're making content and tools available to our teachers to help them increase and enhance their teaching.''
Chicago is perhaps the largest school district to loosen restrictions, but technology administrators say it is just a matter of time until more barriers fall.
At a time when financially ailing states are slashing education budgets and evidence is mounting of a widening achievement gap between rich and poor students, schools can ill afford to turn off a free source of credible educational tools.
Robert Gulick, director of technology in the Washington Local Schools in Toledo, Ohio, said: ''If we didn't have a system for filtering it, we couldn't partake, but we do now … it is a great way to find additional materials.''
NEW YORK TIMES
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
No comments:
Post a Comment