I just watched the "YouTube in Classrooms" video by Bill Genereux, and I must say it was highly disappointing. In his introduction, Bill appears leery of technology, commenting that technology often seemed overabundant. This was a strange lead-in, as I was of the impression this video was as progressive as others we've been seen in support of technology and social networking in schools.

It occurred to me that Bill was being sarcastic, or parodying the feelings of most public school educators, but honestly I'm still unsure of his intentions. The video begins by revealing how many students out of 11 in a random classroom (no grade level or subject is given) have some form of camera or video recorder on their person. All of them have at least one.

Bill shows clips of students blogging on YouTube, mostly complaining how bored they are of school, how much they hate it, what they'd rather be doing, etc. Surely this isn't the opinion of all students, and there are certainly more insightful student videos out there. He continues showing students recording their teachers during class, many openly defying them as classmates laugh. Teachers even look directly at the students' cameras and make little to no effort to confiscate them. I believe this is all done to show awareness of poor uses of YouTube in classrooms and why many teachers would not support said use. Candidly, I don't think this does more damage to Bill's cause than anything.

The video paints a very dismal portrait of American public school students until nearly the very end. After showing us clip after clip of disturbing student behavior, Bill does a 180 and attempts to show us the positive aspects of YouTube in classrooms, and I believe he falls very short. His own description of his video claims to show "an unprecedented look into the world's educational institutions." This is a far cry from what we are actually shown. Bill very briefly mentions the possibility for global communication via YouTube by showing us a few clips of supposed students from other countries. We are not told what countries these are, and the clips are not particularly useful. No communication across nations is actually shown; the videos are not in a context to which we as educators can relate.

Bill introduces us to a teacher named Jonathan Dale, who claims to video record his students as often as possible, giving very little insight or reasoning into his actions. Bill says he always "makes the students look good," and Mr. Dale says his classroom YouTube video uploads have led to an exchange of ideas among him and other teachers. I find this all highly disconcerting; a male 5th grade teacher claiming to keep a video camera in his pocket at all times just sounds creepy to me. I have a hard time believing that all the parents of his students have agreed to this practice and don't mind their children being so visible on the Internet. Once again, Mr. Dale never really gave us any rationale for his constant recordings, and neither does Bill.

I still don't understand what I was supposed to gain from it. Even the production quality was very low, and I dreaded watching it just from how poorly recorded it was. Bill and Mr. Dale may very well be "pioneers" and champions for technology in the classroom, but they come across as nothing of the sort in this video. I find both of them hard to understand, in the sense that I never really know their true opinions. I would not recommend that anyone watch this video, for any reason. It does very little to further the cause for YouTube and such technologies in the classroom; in fact I feel it does the exact opposite. I am left Googling for better videos to actually see the potential this video attempted to achieve. 

I came across this one, which was created by a 10th grade media arts teacher. She first gives a very detailed account of how she uses YouTube personally and shows many of its useful functions. She shows us examples of work her students have posted online for her to see, and even to edit to create a complete project. She assigns a video sequencing assignment which allows each student to edit a video clip of a specific situation, in this case a girl walking down a path, in a unique way. I actually think this assignment is pretty cool, and think it's a great way to gain a perspective on each individual student. It's very important to get a feel for students' personal views and forms of expression. Their creative capabilities are crucial to explore, and should be encouraged regularly. I think this teacher's assignment is an excellent way of utilizing all those concepts.