YouTube is being used for more than just wasting time — it has become an educational tool.
Spanish professor Nelson Hippolyte teaches a culture and civilization class that requires students to memorize many names and dates. YouTube allows his students to participate in Spanish history so they can put faces to those names, he said, adding that the images and information now give him access to an interactive database.
“You have a live library in your hand, with instant information you didn’t have in the past,”
he said.
Students view classroom video clips in the same way.
“A lot of times it can be kind of dry and kind of boring,” said sophomore Jess Tyroler, who was in Hippolyte’s class last quarter. “But when we watch videos, it brings the book to life.”
She also noted that YouTube helped her in her biological anthropology class, where she studied different types of apes and monkeys. Her professor used the Web site to demonstrate how different primates move and act — differences that would be difficult to describe in a book.
While Hippolyte does include some lighter clips, such as Spanish rock music videos, most of what he shows relates directly to material he teaches in class. Hippolyte said he has to do a lot of filtering to find the most official clips.
Graduate student Jon Peterson uses YouTube as a way to encourage more class participation and attendance.
Peterson, who teaches U.S. History after 1850, said showing a political advertisement or music video for the time period can immerse students in the history.
“There are some things that you really can’t explain, and it helps to have a visual,” he said.
Peterson, who said he isn’t very tech savvy, finds YouTube easy to use. He finds the videos before class and puts the links in his Powerpoint slides.
“It does take some creative searching sometimes, though,” he said.
For the section the class did on the ’60s, Peterson showed a music video by country singer Merle Haggard.
“Okie from Muskogee” depicts someone who didn’t like the hippies of the time, and it’s important to contrast the stereotypes of that time period, Peterson said.
In an era where culture is growing more and more dependent on visuals, having instant access to material that would have been very hard to find a few years ago is something incredible, Hippolyte said.
“Of course there are bad parts,” he said. “People don’t read as much, and you should read.”
But in the future, Hippolyte thinks even some books might begin to disappear and be published online instead.
Video clips can be educational and entertaining but are less easily regulated than printed material.
Peterson uses Saturday Night Live clips in class, but said he goes through the SNL Web site, because YouTube doesn’t have any kind of agreement with NBC to post them.
“You do have to sit through a commercial, but I usually just make a joke about it and move on,” he said.
Hippolyte compares YouTube to television in the past — it belongs to everybody.
An ideal situation would be something more official, almost like a closed-circuit television program for the university, he said.
“Every university should have a big visual library, a professionalized YouTube, right next to Blackboard,” he said.
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