{"id":12778,"date":"2018-02-09T11:33:37","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T19:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=12778"},"modified":"2018-02-09T11:33:37","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T19:33:37","slug":"why-and-how-to-use-youtube-video-essays-in-your-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/why-and-how-to-use-youtube-video-essays-in-your-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Why and How to Use YouTube Video Essays in Your Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a world of nearly ubiquitous YouTube viewership, watching and making video essays in the classroom is not only a great platform for close reading and digital composition, but a media literacy imperative, argues Tanner Higgin from Common Sense Education<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Like many of you, I’ve been thinking a lot lately<\/a> about how we can better prepare students to be thoughtful, responsible, and critical consumers and creators. While I don’t have all the answers, I’ve come to one conclusion: Media-literacy education must deal with YouTube. Ninety-one percent of teens use YouTube<\/a>. That’s 30 percent more than use Snapchat (61 percent), the next closest social media competitor, and even more than use tech we think of as ubiquitous, like Gmail (79 percent).<\/p>\n

What’s more, YouTube is a unique beast and can’t just be tacked on. It has its own celebrities, culture, norms, and memes and has even given rise to the dreaded “YouTube voice<\/a>.” But what I find particularly fascinating is that YouTube has its own genres and types of videos. One of these—the video essay—is something I think can be a great tool for media-literacy education. Here’s why…<\/p>\n

What Are YouTube Video Essays?<\/h4>\n

YouTube video essays are long-form (relative to many other internet videos) critical videos that make arguments about media and culture. They’re usually meticulously narrated and edited, juxtaposing video footage, images, audio, and text to make an argument much like a writer would do in a traditional essay. As former YouTube talent scout Jeremy Kaye puts it<\/a>, video essays “take a structured, in-depth, analytical, and sometimes persuasive approach, as opposed to the quick ‘explainer’ video style.”<\/p>\n