TeacherTube is a video sharing website that is very similar to YouTube in layout and function, with one crucial difference: it's entirely devoted to educational videos. The site monitors inappropriate materials, so it's safe to use in the classroom. Although the Google ads on the site and below each video are distracting and annoying, it's still an amazing resource for students and educators.
TeacherTube has thousands of videos, many of them student-made, covering topics from PE exercises to Monet's painting techniques. Because anyone can upload videos to the site, the videos vary, and not all of them are straightforward educational videos. Some of them are student projects or classroom demonstrations, and many of them are amateur presentations. However, the benefit of this is that you also get to see what students around the world are working on – there are videos from classrooms as far apart as New York and New Zealand.
TeacherTube videos play on a three-by-four inch screen. The quality really varies from video to video, depending on who made them. For the most part, the quality is not especially high, and the videos take a while to load.
You need Adobe Flash Player to view the videos.
TeacherTube has a lot of useful extra features. You can email the videos to friends, embed them in blogs or link to them in other websites using the provided HTML code, and you can also download the video to your own computer.
TeacherTube is free, but you must sign up for an account to access features like the Upload option. You must be over 18 and an educator to sign up.
