Thing #20 (You Tube)

I can spend hours on You Tube watching random videos. There are a lot of videos on the site that you wish were not there. Anyone can upload any video no matter what the content of the video. I wish they would preview some of the videos that where not worth viewing and have them deleted from the site. I like how You Tube allows you to search through videos, recommends videos for you, and has some television shows to watch.

The video I choose was a song that went to the Ghostbusters theme song about swine flu. The video is pretty funny. I thought with all this talk about the flu that this is the perfect video for the occasion. Every year during this time people start to get worried about the flu but this year it is even worse because of the H1N1 strand of the flu. My husband just got over the flu and he was miserable and I thought I might get the flu from being around him. Thank goodness I am healthy and did not get the flu. I came face to face with the flu and I won.

I can see components of You Tube that could be applied to library websites. Children can watch educational videos about topics that they normally would have to read in books. They can also watch instructional videos to learn how to do a project or complete a task. I would just make sure that all the inappropriate videos would be blocked so children couldn't view them. Teacher Tube would be a more appropriate site for children to use because it is just educational videos.