YouTube lessons for life:

When I first went to web media the first thing I noticed was a difference in teaching style to what we are usually served here at Wintec. Stephen seemed to know his stuff and with all the crazy new stuff we had to learn he used videos to help us get the hang of it. It’s amazing what a useful teaching tool YouTube can become. When he wanted to point out the usefulness of things such as bookmarking and how to use the GoldWave program he showed us simple instructional “videos in plain English” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU). And they’re all free! There’s heaps of them too, for just about every internet tool you can imagine. So, as long as you can use YouTube (I’m sure there’s instructions for that), your set! So when Stephens zippy explanations haven’t quite stuck, go to YouTube for a refresher. This has opened up a whole new can of worms really. What other things can YouTube teach us? Is there free instructional videos that could help with all our classes. I know we all use a video or two to plump up those pesky presentations. So I did some research into the matter. I looked up some videos that could help me in a few areas, how to make a decent PowerPoint presentation for starters. To be honest, it was quite difficult to separate the silly stuff and deluded ‘experts’ from the rest. But after a bit of tough, journalistic research I managed to find a few useful things such as “How NOT to use PowerPoint” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cagxPlVqrtM&feature=related). I also found some really bad ones that were basically impossible to sit through (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2R0TFLXhQE if you dare!). In conclusion, YouTube’s worth having a look at for lessons, just so long as you have more willpower than I and don’t get distracted by videos totally unrelated to this topic. Ahem. Back to my first point though - Tutors, do not make your lesson entirely out of YouTube videos. Make sure give us something the internet can’t…whatever that may be.