My goal through this research project was to deconstruct the use of YouTube and analyze its role in World language education. Based on my initial research, the use of youtube videos in the classroom seems to have an overwhelming positive outcome in students’ achievement (for more information see http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?reload=true&punumber=6238099). As it pertains to the language classroom, YouTube is a powerful tool for an educator to bring authentic language into the classroom. Students learning languages now, as opposed to when I was learning in the classroom eight years ago, are not limited to their language teacher’s access to authentic language videos and music. Thanks to the greatest video hub, language teachers can use more frequent authentic language exposure to sharpen student’s ears. As a French teacher, my classroom resources are almost exclusively limited to the French culture, and very small exposure to other francophonie. In this way, youtube serves as a medium to expose students to more cultural diversity in the target language.
It is important, however, to explore how an adolescent’s relationship to youtube may differ from that of an educator’s. For a number of reasons, adolescents interact differently with Youtube than adults. While an adult may perceive youtube as a relatively new way to watch and share videos, adolescents cannot remember a time where prior to the existence of youtube, making them all the more comfortable with this platform. Their familiarity with youtube combined with the adolescents’ tendency to act impulsively, without thought for future consequences, makes them more likely to make publically make mistakes through this medium. Many adolescents make the mistake of posting themselves in a video performing an illegal act, only to think that once they remove the video, no one will have access to it anymore. Seeing as adolescents struggle with the ability to think about long-term consequences, teachers need to start the conversation about why posting comments and videos on youtube is risky and should be treated with caution.
The language classroom can serve as a safe space to start the dialogue about youtube and other forms of social media, specifically as teachers introduce new material through youtube. Many adolescents are so used to expressing themselves through numerous technologies, that the classroom needs to be a place where teachers start the conversation about what consequences posting information on the internet as well as emphasizing the importance of keeping private material private. In all content areas, it’s important to talk about the rules and laws that are in place in the school to protect the students’ privacy. For instance, a conversation about responsible youtube use could be started when a teacher explains why he cannot take a picture of his students’ faces. While there are multiple natural transitions into a diaglogue about responsible youtube use, the important is that the dialogue is started because students will not come to teachers asking to discuss the real consequences of youtube use.
Gretchen, I really appreciated your specificity of the use of YouTube in the Language classroom. I was able to relate this to my own experience in French classrooms, and found that it corroborated quite nicely with your own research; though not proficient in French, I recall that throughout my entire 8 years of learning French, my teachers and professors would incorporate YouTube videos of conjugations and French speakers/music videos/culture to engage us, and I have found, in retrospect, that the classes that incorporated more videos tended to be the ones I remember better. Not only did I learn more about authentic French culture from being able to access these videos (I learned who Yannick Noah was, about French politics, French landscape, French poetry, etc.), but as you mentioned, I was not just limited to my professor or teacher’s French accent, voice, and dialect. In some French classes, particularly during high school, my teachers would engage us in oral performance by prompting us to create YouTube videos, which allowed us to expand our creativity beyond the boring usual oral conversation exam, also giving us the opportunity to hone our technology/digital proficiencies. The down side of these sort of assignments was obviously, as you mentioned, the discomfort of being completely Internet public, which brings with it negative feedback (getting made fun of for anything from your lack of scripting creativity, which, come on, it’s another language, to your outfits, to being fat). My teachers usually allowed us to make these videos private so as to protect our fragile adolescent self-concepts and mediate the aforementioned issues. Overall though, I agree with your views; especially in a Language classroom, I think that YouTube is an extremely valuable asset because it can transport you from 7 East 12th Street to the Champs Élysées with the click of a button.
Gretchen, I agree with you that Youtube could bring more authentic and diverse material and information to language teaching classrooms. I have had a number of classes during which my teachers showed Youtube videos. I think it is also a great way to connect with adolescents since they are more familiarised with it. What’s also important, like you mentioned is to bring to students the rist of using Youtube concerning posting vedios of themselves or any others. My only concern is that there are countries like China that don’t have access to Youtube and teachers who wish to use such materials have to go through so much trouble in order to get it. I know there is no one solution to this, but if there’s any other social media platform that could serve similar purposes as Youtube that anyone could bring up is more than helpful to such situations. Thank you very much for your time!