YouTube is a gold mine of historical nuggets: videos of the Civil Rights Movement, the funeral of JFK, the Cuban Miss, the Holocaust, presidential debates. History teachers can easily add short videos to daily lesson plans, bringing history right into the the classroom. English teachers can find videos of Shakespeare plays, student projects,  clips of movies based on novels, and poets reading their won poems. Foreign language teachers can find video clips of foreign language films (I helped one teacher find the first French movie, a 1910 Science Fiction film) or commercials from France and Spain. With a few tricks (discussed later), students can download these videos and edit them in iMovie or MovieMaker to provide French or Spanish dialogue. Lower school students can explore weather, astronomy, and current events. The possibilities are endless and painless to include in a classroom environment.

Another example: a group of sixth grade teachers were reading The Diary of Anne Frank with their classes, and the students were unaware of the historical events. Additionally, the teachers wanted the students to realize that Anne was an actual person, not a fictional character. The teachers started each class with a short video from YouTube: a collage of photos, the only known video c lip of Anne, scenes from Triumph of the Will, etc. The teachers marveled at the quality of class discussions and the students’ interest in reading the Diary. Following is a great and moving example:

Another example: students researched presidential candidates in the YouChoose section and then created 3 minute campaign spots for the candidate of their choice with the use of downloaded video clips (using zamzar.com) and video editing software and web sites.

Here is an example of the same video that has been edited using bubbleply. The text box is also a hyperlink.