YouTube and You: Teacher and teaching in the Digital Age

There has been a paradigm shift in the way teaching and learning has been taking place in the digital era. Teaching technologies have radically changed the classroom ambience and the students are an advantaged lot and enthusiastic in the digital era. With these societal patterns in mind, there is a need to modify instructional methods and activities to take advantage of the unique interests of these students. Much of what they want educationally relates to their growing interest in and use of Web-based technologies .YouTube is a wonderful collection of video clips which are a visual treat to the learning community. The real advantage of YouTube is that if offers authentic examples of everyday English spoken by people. After considering the basic premise behind YouTube and the specific needs of the students, the next logical question is: can the use of YouTube videos in the foreign language classroom satisfy students and teachers? The answer is yes. YouTube offers fast and fun access to language and culture-based videos and instruction from all over the globe. It provides an outlet for student and teacher-created videos, and most importantly, YouTube videos provide students with an opportunity to engage meaningfully in the target language. There are several advantages to using video clips educationally. Videos have been found to benefit students by connecting to multiple intelligences, both hemispheres of the brain, and to the emotional sense of the students. The concepts or ideas are more likely to be remembered if they are presented as pictures rather than words. The poignant part of this approach is that the students are more likely to remember the lesson after the fact. Foreign language students may be temporarily distracted or entertained by a YouTube video clip, but they will gain
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real linguistic knowledge and skills at the same time. This research paper highlights the aura of teaching students using YouTube videos and the positive impact it has over the students. Utilizing videos for language teaching has been one of the most effective ways to achieve success in the classroom. The ELT has been using the videos for teaching English language skills since many years now. The organizations like BBC and CNN have even made billions of dollars selling the video content for teaching purposes. Money and time are two factors which have been creating so many hurdles in accessing the authentic video content in the past time. But for last five and a half years, YouTube, a video content sharing website has been making the difference to it. At YouTube, anyone can post or access video content. YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. YouTube uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, UMG and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program (Wikipedia, 2009) YouTube now contains enormous amount of video content, some of which is highly exploitable in the classroom. YouTube features videos in several categories. Some of them are: entertainment, comedy, education, film and animation, gaming, how to and style, music, news and politics, nonprofits and activism, people and Blogs, pets and animals, science and technology, sports, travel and events.

From the point of view of ELT, the real benefit of YouTube is that it offers authentic examples of everyday English used by everyday people. YouTube give challenges as well. Students may enjoy watching these clips, but poor sound quality, pronunciation and slang can make these short videos even more difficult to understand. The use of YouTube videos also enables teachers to attach the students to the real life nature of these videos. By creating context for these short videos students can be assisted to explore a world of online English learning possibilities. According to Patel (2009) key benefits of using YouTube for ELT are that teachers can: 1)obtain free video content, 2) obtain enormous variety, 3) reproduce authentic language in the classroom, 4) access comprehensible input which is offered through videos. Teachers can also use Tube videos in an ELT classroom for various teaching such vocabulary, accents, pronunciations, voice modulation as well as teaching such English skills as listening, speaking, and writing. Recently, YouTube and BBCs international commercial television channel have collaborated. With this around 30 news clips per day will be offered, with up-to-the-minute news and analysis from around the world. The advertising-funded clips will be available to users outside the UK only. Users will be able to comment on clips, rate them, recommend them to friends and post their own video responses to communicate with the BBC and other viewers. This makes possible for teachers to have even authentic authentic video content for their classrooms. The BBC content on YouTube is available athttp://www.youtube.com/BBC Other than BBC, there are several ELT experts worldwide who have been posting their English Language Teaching content on YouTube. Such videos include English teaching tips, tricks, methods, approaches and more. If the internet users search for ELT on YouTube, the search engine will

bring up about 1830 videos (Patel, 2009). And if they will search for English Language Teaching the search engine will bring about 1240 videos (Ibid, 2009). YouTube also features hundreds of videos in the following categories too ; English Language Learning, English Language Lessons, English Language Course, English, Language Comedy, English Language Tutorials, English Language History, English Language Commercials, English Language Teaching Tips, English Language Teaching Methods and much more. All this ELT video content is offered on YouTube on the following channels; Quality English Lessons, English Language Teaching, Edufinder, Macmillan ELT, Teaching English in China with EF English First, eezenglish, Imagine, Learning English, Using YouTube for Vocabulary Development, 100 Best YouTube Videos for Teachers. Students in many contexts have said they like video activities because they provide a break from the usual textbook-based activities, and even when the activities challenge students, learning with video is more enjoyable. Grammar is one area that has perennial interest among researchers and students alike. Students find it challenging and complex in learning the nuances of the language. YouTube videos provide enthralling experience to the students. It appeals to their multiple intelligences and engages both hemispheres of the brain. Grammar Rock is one such video where students can learn all the eight parts of speech. It is an animated series with basic themes but it vividly explains the different parts of speech with examples. Students, who are exposed to this video, find it very useful and enjoyable that they were able to comprehend the concepts much better than the traditional way of teaching. They are more enthusiastic and zealous to learn when videos are used in the classroom. The most exciting part of
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this video is that it is in the form of a song and naturally students are inclined towards the musical aspect of the song and later on towards the content of the clip. One can supplement their teaching with such videos to inspire the students. Pronunciation is one area which is neglected by many as they find it difficult to pronounce the words. YouTube can provide excellent resource for teaching pronunciation. Even teachers find it difficult to teach pronunciation as their pronunciation is not to the level of proficiency. YouTube videos provide authentic materials like the clips of BBC which can be effectively used in the Indian classrooms. The sounds of the English language can be best taught with the help of videos and gets imbibed into the systems of our students. Teachers can facilitate their learning with their expertise and help them speak English with better pronunciation.

With these societal patterns in mind, there is a need to modify instructional methods and activities to take advantage of the unique interests of these students. YouTube videos can serve many purposes for foreign languages; however, the majority of uploaded videos are used to provide linguistic and cultural content and information in and related to the target language. Many of these videos are created by individuals or instructional institutions. Utilizing YouTube videos in an informative manner is also beneficial for illustrating a concept, presenting an alternative viewpoint, stimulating a learning activity, and motivating the students (Berk, 2009). As such, these videos may be used for inspiring or motivating students to learn.

The concept of utilizing videos in the foreign language classroom is not novel by any means. However, the opportunity for student-created videos and social networking provided by YouTube
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presents a radical new approach to providing linguistic input and encouraging students to engage in the target language. Utilizing this approach to learning foreign languages concentrates on the defining characteristics of the digital natives for whom digital technologies and social networking have become commonplace and indispensable in their daily lives. It is undeniable that foreign language teaching will remain a delicate balancing act; however, YouTube is a tool that can help tilt the scales in favor of teachers. Integrating the use of YouTube videos in foreign languages is a valuable resource for teachers and students. In addition, YouTube provides a powerful, social venue in which the potential reach is exponential (Prensky, 2009). Typically, foreign language teachers may share with their fellow teachers in the same school, possibly with others in the same district. By posting a useful video to YouTube there is unlimited access to instructional videos and the potential benefit across the globe is much higher.
REFERENCES

Berk, R. A. (2009). Multimedia teaching with video clips: TV, movies, YouTube, and mtvU in the college classroom. International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning, 5(1), 121. Retrieved from http://www.sicet.org/journals/ijttl/issue0901/1_Berk.pdf Cambell, AP, 2003, Weblogs for use with ESL classes, http://iteslj.org/Techniques/CampbellWeblogs.html Patel, T, 2009, YouTube for ELT, Gujarat, 2009, http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/tarunpatel/youtube-elt viewed 15 July

Levy, M. Computer-Assisted Language Learning: Context and Conceptualization. New York, Oxford University Press, 1997. Print

Prensky, M. (2009). Make those YouTubes! Retrieved from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/