Lesson 5 - Online video sites

I spent a couple of hours exploring all four video sites. I enjoyed all of them, although I think we'd have to exercise some caution using You Tube or Clip Blast at school. (Even some of the thumbnails in the menu were inappropriate!) I was disappointed in the limited selection of videos in NextVista, but it's a great innovation with a lot of potential. I really like the policy that the videos must be safe, short, and factually accurate! It would be great to see teachers and/or students from Hilton contribute to the NextVista collection. The History Music Videos on TeacherTube demonstrated an impressive level of investment from the students. It was obvious that a lot of time went into the creation of some of these projects. I also saw some interesting Teacher Tube videos on Myanmar, Children's Art, and a couple of math concepts. Some of the clips were better than others. You Tube and Clip Blast both had some powerful videos in the categories of politics, history, travel, arts and culture. (Really, some of them had me nearly in tears!) Although there are some worthwhile videos on each of the four websites, teachers would need to spend a bit of time surfing within specific categories of films and making careful selections before sharing them in a class.