Teaching with You Tube

Amy Palko recently graduated
from Stirling University after
successfully defending her
PhD thesis, Charting Habitus:
Stephen King, the Author
Protagonist and the Field
of Literary Production.
Her teaching mostly focusses on
20th- and 21st-century texts,
specialising in American literature,
textual culture, book history,
popular fiction and the Gothic.

The screen on the laptop becomes animated as a figure of a woman fidgets awkwardly in front of a microphone. The camera takes in the mocking scepticism of those sitting in the audience and the cynical raised eyebrow of the critical music mogul judge. The background music begins and the woman starts to sing, her voice soaring with a clear resonance evidently astounding to the attendant crowd. The clip lasts only minutes, streamed directly from source to computer, and yet it has been watched by millions and has generated a media storm leading to international news coverage, tabloid frenzy, Oprah interviews and a week’s retreat to ’The Priory’. Surely this is the power of the Internet, and, more specifically, the power of YouTube.

An underestimated educational resource

And yet, the power of YouTube as an educational resource is still largely underestimated, as it is currently more famous for its facilitation of Britain’s Got Talent singer Susan Boyle’s hyperbolic rise to international celebrity than for its usefulness to the university teacher. However, the video-sharing website surely deserves recognition as a valuable tool in the university teacher’s arsenal, rather than be disregarded as a fame machine for the talented few and the talentless many. Often considered the home of the bizarre and the banal, YouTube is frequently overlooked as a resource for the lecture theatre or tutorial room; however, its potential to engage students, to provide them with a visual connection to abstract literary theory, and to contribute to their understanding of context is too important to ignore. For teachers of English literature, in particular, there exists a wealth of material to enliven any lesson, that could not only capture the interest of a student struggling through some of the more dense texts on the reading list, but could also spark illuminating discussion, inspire new thought and increase the level of participation. The generation which is currently coming through the university undergraduate system is an extremely visually literate one; what YouTube allows you to do as a teacher is harness this visual literacy and use it to shed light on text, context and theory.

While also being increasingly visually literate, our students are also committed and savvy users of the Internet and the many different forms of social media for which the Internet provides a platform. The power of social media, partly because of its constantly evolving nature, can be difficult to channel within an educational establishment, which is unaided by the general perception of social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and Bebo, as media which exist almost solely as vehicles for procrastination. I would be lying if I were to tell you that this were not the case; certainly many hours are lost through the act of updating statuses. However, the way in which these sites are being used by some should not blind us to the fact that the facilities they offer can be turned to educational use. This is being researched and, indeed, put into practice by many individuals and institutions throughout the world. If you are one of those who have either developed a resistance to the inclusion of social media into your teaching or if you have found yourself in an institution currently dragging its heels on the issue of digital media as an educational resource, then read on.

With or without the right equipment

One thing that YouTube has shown us, though, is that consumption is only one side of the coin.

I admit to being an avid user of social media; I find it exciting in its potential and scope and can see its value for use in various forms. When I began teaching, I took this enthusiasm into my tutorials. Initially, I was teaching in rooms that were not equipped with the technology which would have allowed me to bring the Internet fully into my teaching. Consequently, my use of YouTube, in particular, had to be managed by circuitous route, in that I downloaded the clips that I required onto my laptop prior to my class, in order to still make use of this valuable resource. The student response to the inclusion of YouTube clips was very positive, with many connections to the course material forged through the use of clips to initiate discussion and to concretise the abstract. Subsequently, I was fortunate enough to teach in rooms which were fully wired up to the Internet, thus allowing me to improvise while teaching; if I thought extra historical context would be appreciated and appropriate to the class, then, having carefully prepared, I could quickly find a relevant clip to illustrate. This flexibility allowed me to be responsive to the needs of the class, through the freedom to pursue lines of thought, and to build upon areas of interest initiated by the class themselves.

Classroom practice

Some specific examples will help to explain the way that I use YouTube in my teaching and, hopefully, inspire you to take the principles behind my choice of clips and explore the uses of YouTube in your own teaching. One of my first experiences teaching undergraduates was in a first semester, first-year class, in which I used YouTube as a means to introduce and interrogate the fairy-tale themes present in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979). During that tutorial, I focussed specifically on ’The Lady of the House of Love’ and its incorporation of the fairy-tale narrative Sleeping Beauty. I compared the short story to the Disney film Sleeping Beauty (1959), which many of the class had watched as children, but had not viewed in a considerable period of time. By way of a refresher, I chose one of the montage clips of Sleeping Beauty, which takes a number of key scenes and sets the result to a specific soundtrack. This type of clip is increasingly common on YouTube, with many movie enthusiasts creating their own music videos while condensing the narrative down from 90 minutes to three and a half. By showing this clip to my class I was able to remind them of the basic differences in that narrative which has been so influential in the reception of that specific fairy tale in the popular culture consciousness and then compare it with Carter’s treatment of the tale.

The second clip I showed during that class was a short film called Dysenchanted (2004), directed by Terri Edda Miller, which is available in its entirety on YouTube, and which shares the final minutes of a counsellor-led support group for fairy-tale heroines. The group features, among others, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and Sleeping Beauty, all of whom are suffering from various conditions ranging from obsessive-compulsive disorder to narcolepsy. It also features, however, a divorced single mother from New Jersey whose role demonstrates the ways in which contemporary feminine identities are constructed through the tropes of fairy-tale narratives and their popular re-imaginings. As a group within the tutorial, we addressed this short film as a text in and of itself, and then compared it to Carter’s short stories. In this way, clips on YouTube can be used to offer a secondary text which may serve to contrast the literary text in question, or which may be used as a way of introducing a range of central points to structure the rest of the discussion. There are many short films, animations and narrative-based music videos which can be utilised in this way, with the added benefit that, by providing the URL to your students, they can be watched again after the class as they are all readily available on the Internet.

From fairy tales to body lotion

Another kind of clip frequently available on YouTube is television adverts. Short, familiar, image-focussed and with a high impact, adverts can often be used as a way to explore abstract theory by illustrating, in a tangible way, its contemporary relevance. One advert that I have used to great effect has been from the very successful ’Dove’ advertising campaign, which attempts to refocus advertising away from the stereotypical ideals of femininity to address instead the physical form of ’real’ women. I use Dove: Evolution, which features time-lapse photography as a bare-faced model is primped and preened, photographed and photoshopped before appearing on a billboard. This very short clip is extremely powerful, as it displays an issue of which many, if not all, of the class is aware and are affected by. Using this advert as a springboard, it becomes easier to begin discussing issues of gender theory, including ideas of essentialism and gender performance. By beginning the discussion by showing the concrete example illustrated in the advert, the students are able to make connections to the selected passages from theorist Judith Butler, for example, which they would have struggled to do so had we begun with jumping straight into the theory.

Historical, political and cultural contexts

YouTube can also help us to deliver a measure of context to our students, so as to facilitate their positioning of the course material into a historical, cultural, sociological background. Many television documentaries, made both in the UK and abroad, are uploaded onto YouTube and offer footage that will allow students to engage with their set texts in a way that may have been unachievable otherwise. I found this kind of clip particularly helpful when teaching the 20th-century American short story, as many of the narratives the course focussed on dealt with historic events for which there exists a wealth of material. For example, filming that depicts the Great Depression and the Civil Rights Movement is available on YouTube, thus allowing students to attain a much deeper understanding of many of the themes recurrent throughout the short fiction. Similarly, when teaching a specific period, such as Modernism, YouTube allows you to access clips such as Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), the original choreography of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913) and slideshows of some of the most relevant artists to the period, such as Picasso.

Author interviews

Using the Dove: Evolution advert as a springboard, it becomes easier to begin discussing issues of gender theory, including ideas of essentialism and gender performance.

Author interviews are another kind of clip which are particularly helpful and can lead to some interesting discussions on the positioning of the author, the reader and the text when critically engaging with literature. How does the author’s views on their work inform our own understanding? What are some of the main contexts that one can derive from the author’s personal background? How does the interview magnify or diminish the impact of the marketing of the text by the publishing industry? I have found this to be a very effective way of encouraging students both to value their own interpretation and to appreciate the triangulation of the production of texts from author to publishing industry to reader. However, I very rarely use an author interview to introduce a text, preferring to show the clip after some preliminary close reading and discussion of the text in question, so as to avoid any deferment to the views held by the author regarding their own work. Another form of clip which provides authorial context is the news report. For example, when teaching Blasted (1995), by Sarah Kane, the playwright’s suicide plays an important part in the context of her drama, and, therefore, I found a clip which addressed her death. This will be the case for some instances in which you may be teaching a text from an author whose life was or is particularly newsworthy. YouTube provides many news reports which may offer insight into not only the event itself, but also the way that it was treated in the media at the time.

From consumers to creators

All these examples of how YouTube can be employed in your teaching have focussed primarily on the ways in which YouTube can add to your delivery of content and the provision of discussion points. They are concerned with the integration of already produced clips in the tutorial. One thing that YouTube has shown us, though, is that consumption is only one side of the coin. YouTube, as with all social media, actively encourages the production of content, and it is this that I would like to introduce into my teaching in the near future. The technology to record one’s own clips is now incredibly accessible and easy to use, either through inbuilt webcams, digital cameras which possess a video setting, mobile phones or handheld Flip video cameras. Not only can you produce content for your students, such as providing a reading of an excerpt from The Canterbury Tales or advising on how one reads a poem aloud, but your students can also be set YouTube assignments. They can be asked to construct a video presentation, to respond on video to a clip already posted on the site or to provide images to compliment a piece of text. The applications of this medium are immensely varied and the potential for experimentation is huge.

In order to help you to make the most of this resource in your teaching, I would like to close with a few tips, the first of which pertains to finding relevant clips. The most obvious way, perhaps, is to spend an inordinately long period of time trying out search terms and wading through potentially relevant clips; however, I suggest either outsourcing this search by asking for suggestions on other social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, or you can work as a team. You can set up a Ning site in a matter of minutes very simply by following the instructions, and then invite your colleagues on the course’s teaching team to join. You can then post YouTube clips to the site along with a brief explanation of its value to that course. By working together, you can greatly reduce the time you would spend individually researching YouTube. My second tip concerns the display of the clips to your class, as this is the most crucial component of the integration of YouTube in your teaching. One method is to link directly to YouTube and stream the video live. This, however, can be problematic as occasionally clips are removed and you may be stranded high and dry searching for the elusive clip in front of a class of expectant students. A way to avoid this is to download the clip onto your desktop using a tool such as TubeSock (works on both Mac and Windows), which allows you to download clips from YouTube by typing in the desired URL. TubeSock then converts the clip into an MP4 file, making it easy to display as and when you need to. Lastly, YouTube clips should only be used when they add to your teaching, and should therefore be kept to a minimum. When used best, they generate discussion, encourage participation and facilitate engagement without overshadowing the literature we are teaching. The power of YouTube as an educational tool is truly great; all you need to do is look beyond the common perception of the medium and start using it to excite, inspire and engage your students.

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