Some Things Never Change: Tenacious Challenges of Teaching a YouTube Course for Educators

In this brief forum session, the presenter will introduce three tenacious challenges repeatedly encountered in an online YouTube course that has been offered as an elective in an educational technology program since 2008.
The three tenacious challenges include:

1. misunderstandings about copyright and fair use for educational media. Issues observed in class mirror what Hobbs has written on the subject. This is further complicated by the Content ID system on YouTube, which automatically scans videos for copyrighted content (YouTube Help, 2014).
2. issues related to YouTube being blocked at schools, institutions, and even some countries. Teachers who create educational materials on YouTube may not be able to use those materials at their schools and solutions are still emerging.
3. variable interpretations of what constitutes a “good” educational video. The defining attributes of “good” with respect to educational video can include content, aesthetics, pace, and production quality.

The presenter will introduce each challenge and explain the steps taken to address them. Members of the audience will be encouraged to engage in the discussion to share their own stories and offer their own suggestions for teaching with YouTube or other Web 2.0 services.