Lesson 19: Video- and photo-sharing sites

In this lesson we'll look at some further guidance about online posting, explore ways of using video- and photo-sharing sites to greater effect other than casual viewing, look at the use of social tagging and see how social sites can develop into large scale, socially generated resources.

To start with, another chance to check on blog designs and security settings.  We'll also look at what being posted and at what's appropriate and what's not. You may find it helpful to look at these guidelines.  In particular:

• Use your first name only and do not use pictures of yourself. If you wish to have an image associated with your blog, use a picture of something that represents you.
• Don’t give out any personal information about yourself or anyone else.
• Don't put your email address on your blog. Never give out your school email address (which would immediately identify you as at school).
  
• You are responsible for anything that is posted in your name. Always use appropriate language and remember that how you say something is as important as what you say.
• When writing on your blog or wiki always make sure what you write is fair and accurate.
• Write about and present what you know. Make sure you get your facts straight and ask for advice if you are not sure.
  

1)  YouTube … has a history — we'll watch The Rise and Rise of YouTube (2008).  Next, create a free account and use it (from now on) to keep your favourites to hand — as well as a place where you can upload and share videos.  This is an example of a Favorites page:

Once you have an account, you can also subscribe (within YouTube) to a channel. For example, if you wanted to follow UK politics there's British Politicians on YouTube and Downing Street.  (Even the Queen's on YouTube: The Royal Family.) There are many universities, too: eg, University of Berkeley, California.

You can search on the site by usernames, video titles, descriptions, tags.  Tags on YouTube are provided by the uploader of the video and you can subscribe to tags.

What about more recommendations? You will know some online ways of getting these (tell your set), but here are a couple of good ones for education:

Intelligent Video Playlist by Open Culture

10 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube (Open Culture)

If you want to play with feeds, try this.  And there's an excellent mobile YouTube site — at some point, you should navigate to this on a mobile device, BUT use a WiFi connection to do so (it's data intensive and could prove very expensive).

2)  Google Video

Google may own YouTube, but it's also got Google Video.  You shouldn't overlook this. Examples:

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2007 | Dr. J. Craig Venter

Fermat's Last Theorem (1996) - Google Video

Hyperland — Douglas Adams

It is less social than YouTube, but look:

You can leave comments (as on YouTube) and you can find other videos from an uploader whose material you like.

YouTube videos show up on the Google Video interface and in the search.  Users can use Google Video's own search (on site) or search for videos via Google — adding site:video.google.com if you want to find only videos hosted on Google Video. (Go back to Lesson 10 and remind yourselves of how to use Google search.)

And here's a tip (from another site) to help you find (in this example) Google videos classed by their uploaders as 'educational':

1  Go to Google Video - http://video.google.com
2  In the search box, type: genre:educational
3  Follow it with anything you want to find video for.

3)  How do you download videos from the web?  If you are not infringing copyright (or other permissions set by the owner or uploader), there are many possibilities.  What do you use? These sites offer some ideas:

Download Video From Popular Video Sharing Sites: A Mini-Guide, Robin Good (2007)

12 Essential Greasemonkey Hacks for YouTube, Mashable (2007)

4)  Flickr

Not Google, but Yahoo!  Flickr allows users to open an account for free and share photos online.  Users can set privacy so that only they see certain photos, or they and their family, or they and their friends (and/not their family), or they can make them fully public.  Remember: all photos published online are, in the end, replicable and, when all is said and done, you still have limited control over who is your audience.

So, why share photos?  Watch Online Photo Sharing in Plain English, CommonCraft video (2008).  And these slides highlight the role of tags (put there by the photo's owners and maybe by other people, too):

Slide courtesy of Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo! (http://tinyurl.com/3cjgpp; pdf)

Slide courtesy of Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo! (http://tinyurl.com/3cjgpp; pdf)

Prep: On your blog, write some 300 words on social software — on its definition (you could start with Wikipedia), its scale ("old" figures for YouTube and Flickr can be found here and here, but you can research to see if there are more recent figures or indicators available [there are!] — eg, this and this) and the role of tagging in the future of the web (you could start here). You should also consider how you use video- and photo-sharing sites — including (not mentioned in this lesson) sites such as Facebook.

If you have time, watch Photosynth: hyperlinking the world's photographs, TED talk 2007 (video).