We'll be honest up front about this blog post. First, this idea won't work in every classroom. Second, this idea won't be cool with every principal. Third, we need to say "thanks" to Mike, our tech guru, who taught us how to embed YouTube content into a blog.
This is Mike, looking dapper for Halloween:
We use YouTube to play music to help us focus in the office, and it got us thinking about using music videos in the classroom. Below are two examples of some pretty interesting videos. The first is "Handlebars" by Flobots. The second is the Linkin Park song "Shadow of the Day."
It would be pretty interesting to use these videos in a Social Studies class to spark discussion about government and media, the role of common people in a democracy, or how the First Amendment protects the right to make videos that could be interpreted as critical of the government.
In English class, students could analyze imagery, the storytelling aspects of the videos, or even write a compare and contrast paper about the videos.
A lot of acts have official YouTube channels, so high quality video is pretty accessible.
In addition to being familiar with the song, of course, we suggest you check-out the comments for video before you show them. Some folks post comments decidedly school INappropriate.
But it would be fun to use technology your students are really familiar with, along with their culture, to get them thinking about bigger concepts.
(here's an extra credit video. we don't know how to use it in class, but it's pretty funny, anyway!)
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