My Response:

I would propose that we as teachers need to understand why we are using teaching tools such as youtube before we can address how we are going to use it in the classroom. We are not using you tube to put cute videos in front of our students are we? As I see it Youtube is a conduit for up to date information. I can jump on an learn a guitar chord I have been struggling with, and actually see various versions of it. I can use it to help me understand a new program, or build a rocket ship. At home almost all students have complete access to You tube - why not teach to critical awareness of source information? Why not design curriculum to help students see you tube as a tool for skill building?

Youtube, and other internet resources, are starting to supersede the role that books as informational resources - but with the accumulation of mass data - youtube in the classroom needs to be approached, not with censorship - but with a curriculum designed to forage out useful and valid information for skill building.

I do, however, wish that youtube had sectors where communities with distinct interests could build dynamic channels that pertain to the selected interest. For instance, I instruct an after school comic creation course called the High Tech High Graphic Novel Project and since my school switched over to Gmail my students are finding TONS of resources regarding comics and their creation, from blogs to a plethora of youtube videos - wouldn’t it be a great app if they could be, as part of their gmail, hooked into a community that had its own youtube channel with all of those skill building videos and blogs - with the opportunity for them to comment and collaborate outside of the classroom to work on this project? A kind of wiki/blog/community that was aimed at this particular group with hooks into resources from groups all around it.