Week #9 Thing #20

I'll have to admit I spent more time searching around YouTube than I thought I would. I had fun watching old commercials, I wondered how people have time to do things like Library Dominos, Conan the Librarian was really funny (might use that one with my students at the beginning of the year), and March of the Librarians was hilarious.

What I like about YouTube and what I don't like about YouTube are almost the same. It's enormous. There is so much on it that you can find almost anything and there is so much on it that there is a lot that is worthless. This is, of course, the dilemma we all face with the amount of information to which we now have access. Teaching my students how to search is a huge responsibility.

I do like TeacherTube a little better in that it narrows down the material. My favorite video on YouTube is Yes We Can by Will.i.am. (yes, I'm an Obama supporter) followed by the speech Obama gave last week about race in America. What I find wonderful about YouTube is that there is access to this kind of material. I couldn't hear the speech because I was at work but I could listen to it on my lunch break. I found the Yes We Can video amazing just as a video but also as a new way to communicate with voters...young voters...on their terms...using a medium that they are excited about. This has implications for teaching as well.

Professionally, I liked the Librarian 2.0 Manifesto. So interesting with the Burning Man images. The one phrase that stood out to me was "responsiveness to change." That I think, is the key, both for us as librarians in this explosion of information and for our students. They will need this skill...responsiveness to change. We need to see this as a positive skill (or at the least a survival skill) for we are teaching them how to be lifelong learners in their world, not the world we grew up in or even the world of today. Responsiveness to change...it sounds so exciting, so hopeful.