TeacherTubes!

The first TeacherTube I examined can be found at http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=3460&title=The_Great_Gatsby. This instructor did a short "home-made" documentary on his thoughts of The Great Gatsby. His documentary had saxophone music in the opening and closing, and I think at a few points when looking at photos. He had photos to illustrate what he was talking about. He also included excerpts of text from the novel, as a picture and being read by someone. It turns out that he did an excellent job following copyright laws. He cited exactly where he got the music. He cited where the photos came from. He did not use more than 10% of the text of the novel. It was an interesting thing to watch, and gave me a great idea for teaching. It could be fun for a class to see an example documentary of the teacher, and then the class (or groups in the class) could put together their own documentary for a project about a book the class reads.

The second video can be found at http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=3181&title=The_Old_Man_and_the_Sea__opening_passage. This video was just under a minute long and had a similar approach to the other one I watched: it was a narrator reading the opening passage from The Old Man and the Sea. He cited his works at the end, and added a special link so that anyone can check out the copyrights on the photos he used.

I picked videos that seemed more legitimate and worth my time, and I was rewarded with two that followed copyright laws very well. I am sure if I looked at videos that were a little less well- made there would be many issues with copyright infringement. I think TeacherTube can be a great resource, and even if you don't do exactly what they show on the video they get your creativity sparking!