Is TeacherTube a Bad Idea?

I'm experimenting with posting directly from diigo -- I've annotated and highlighted from the original post from my friend Shmuly Tennenhaus.

My friend Smuly is a youtube expert -- he's been on many nightly news programs and in newspapers (see the New York Times article on him.) I'm still turning over the thoughts from his blog post that he shared.. he has made a few good points that I had to go back to teacherTube to see.

We have to use teachertube on horizon because it is the only video sharing service that is unblocked in all of our schools. We are cross posting to youtube for those schools that allow youtube access.

SchoolFinder Blog » YouTube Versus TeacherTube Annotated




My notes:


  • He has been cited multiple times for his videos and has been on more news tv shows than i can count. He does know video! - post by coolcatteacher

  • Many schools do block it for bandwidth reasons. - post by coolcatteacher
Some highlights from the article:


"Video-sharing can be very useful in the classroom. And many schools do block access to sites like YouTube...

This is more than just semantics. If the name of the site makes ME cringe, how will it ever appeal to a teenager who shops at Abercrombie and has Timbaland streaming from her iPod?...

For example, maybe YouTube can make an education domain that does not have access to the rest of the site. Google would like to be a player in the education space. As would Yahoo. And Microsoft....

3) TeacherTube is ad-supported. (Yup; I am not sponsoring the site!) The ads unfortunately are anti-education!

a) University of Phoenix Online is all over the place. Yes; they are into education etc. Here are the FACTS: UOP overall graduation rate is 16%. The national average is 55%. And University of Phoenix Online? Their graduation rate is 4%! Ouch.

b) Check out the screen shot of TeacherTube. That’s an ad for a get rich scheme site. Check them out. The landing page has a guy without his shirt on. The guy does have nice pecs. Still, I doubt schools would be excited with the association."
This leaves me wondering, we've got to give some method of making money to these businesses. If educators aren't paying for a service then the business either has to: 1) sell it to us or 2) sell it to advertisers, or option 3) Sell upgraded services to educators.

There are costs involved.

The rule about free stuff: there is no such thing as free stuff!

I'm thankful for companies such as wikispaces who give us great service for free. I also like that schools can purchase upgraded services from them.

I think that companies that serve educators need to take a long hard look at what they do. My honest opinion: Google Adsense and education just don't mix. Period.

Contextual advertising will often give innappropriate options for students to BUY term papers, or "date sexy women in Qatar" (the ad that almost killed flat classroom when at the time Ning was google adsense loaded.)

We just need to think about it educators. It is free but is it the right thing?

We should consider what we're doing. I don't have answers and I'm not saying run away from TeacherTube which I've supported from the beginning. I am saying that I think it is time to evolve and think about some of this.


(Oh and this blogging from Diigo thing is cool.)

tag: , , , , , , , ,

Popular Posts