I got a few comments on YouTube today. Not about my recent videos on China (though I persuaded my friend Geoff, who’s a China buff, to at least view a few of them, and comment on one), but the videos I did several years ago, about English language and grammar.
This one:
Apparently, I’m now the English teacher of some sk8er dude somewhere. This guy:
This is what I was talking about in a post not that long ago. If a teacher can’t figure out a way to connect with students, any time, any where, in a comprehensible and compact form… that teacher may not have students for much longer. They’ll reach out and find solutions any which way they can… but they won’t be looking to their official for answers. That’s a problem.
It’s a problem for a couple of reasons. First, it favors the web-connected over the non-web-connected student. Second, it favors the students whose teachers have access to technology over those who don’t. Third, it favors imaginative and creative teachers against those who merely adopt procedure.
There’s monetary issues too, which I’ll talk about in another post. Schools, technically, may own some or all of the intellectual property their teachers create. Yet unlike other professions, there’s no tried-and-true bonus system for teachers to benefit from the materials they invent, and the stuff I put on YouTube essentially robs both my school and me for the benefit of YouTube and Google. How’s this all going to sort out? How are ordinary creators going to benefit from the new creative opportunities in teaching here?
You might want to look at http://www.youtube.com/partners or http://www.vimeo.com/ if you are interested in making some money off your videos.
If you want to make more money from the videos have a look at http://www.vtc.com/ or http://www.atomiclearning.com/ both of which I’ve used in the past.
I do agree that one of the major issues at the moment is that many teachers make resources and never share them because there is no compensation for sharing them. On top of that it is often a pain to clear all the rights to make them public.
As soon as you start looking into getting compensated though every wants to take their cut. Can’t remember where you got a photo from? You can get away using it locally in your classroom (fair use) but if you publish it you now have different laws to deal with. Cut scene from a movie or a piece of music? Good luck even talking to the company without a lawyer.
The only thing that I’ve been able to come up with so far is starting a company on the side and creating content outside of school hours, double check your contract, etc, etc…
As far a Youtube and google robbing you and your school be aware that you are getting a service from them that cost them money. If you really think they are robbing you try hosting the videos on your own server or on Amazon S3 (which I have done in the past) and find out if you can make more money than it costs.
Oh, I think there is no question but we would lose the shirt off our backs. Badly made, cartoonish videos about bureaucracy in China? No one would buy this. Without Google and YouTube offering free video hosting, I’d never be making videos at all. But I wonder how many teachers decide not to make videos or other online resources because they won’t be compensated for making them?