Get Connected with Video at EmpowerUs

Within the past year online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily to upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently at the top serving up over 1 million video views a day and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily. Visitors to YouTube view, tag, comment, share, rate and select favorites.

This fascinating youtube video called “The Machine is Us/ing Us” teaches Web 2.0 in under 5 minutes. It has had 1,845,186 views and has been favorited 18,813 times in the 6 weeks since it was posted by an Assistant professor at Kansas State University studying the culture of YouTube with his Digital Ethnography class.

Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You’ll find everything from 1970s TV commercials and 60s music videos to library dominos and kids singing about bloopers here. Explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer.

Discovery Exercise:

Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
Add a comment and create a blog post about your experience.
Sign up for a YouTube account.
Add an existing video that you liked to your favorites or upload a video of your own and add it to your favorites.
While in YouTube go to My Account - Inbox and select “Compose New Message. Send teachin9[at]gmail.com an e-mail (my username is teachin9), use the button to attach the video that you added to your favorites and send me a message telling me why you liked the video.