Sunday, October 19, 2008

Thing 11: You(Tube) Oughta Be in Pictures

So, enough with the screens and screens of static text and images. The first decade of the 21st century is much like the first decade of the 20th: still images have begun to move! They've also started to speak and sing and...well...



Meet Keepon, a robot designed to react to and engage with children with autism. Turns out, he's also a YouTube sensation. Just as I'm doing right now, videos posted to YouTube are linked to and embedded in blog posts and web sites around the globe, quickly shooting unknowns into online stardom! They even inspire responses and parodies.

YouTube began as a place for individuals to share moments from their lives, from zombie marches to orchestral experiments and drum line performances. Christmas house light displays and the Hallelujah chorus. Oh, and knitting instruction...lots of knitting instruction.

Somewhere along the way, posting a video to a website became an important marketing strategy. Bands are using online video for inexpensive and easily shared exposure. The pop group OK GO! posted an innovative music video two years ago and it's gotten 40 million views to date. The popularity of this video earned them a spot at the MTV Music Video Awards in 2006.



YouTube is the most well-known free video hosting site, but there are others: Google Video, Vimeo and many more.

As internet connections have gotten faster, longer and more serious video has made it to the smallest screen, usually kept on an individual site rather than with a free service. The TED Talks, Google Tech Talks and Berkman Center lectures are three series of presentations given at esteemed institutions and conferences, put online to share ideas beyond the limits of the lecture hall. Similarly, some higher educational institutions are videotaping professors and offering their lectures online, while others are offering distance learning with print, audio and video components.

Now, for the obvious question: How are libraries using this multimedia tool?

Discovery Activity:
Go to YouTube and run a search for "library video". Include the quotation marks to focus the search a bit. Choose a video that strikes you and link to it. In your post, talk a little about the video and what you think of the library's use of this tool.

If you'd like, Go the Extra Mile and embed the video in your blog post.

And now, reversing the usual course of history, we're going to move from moving pictures back to audio-only with Thing 12: Can You Hear Me Now?

----------------

Some more of my favorite videos, just for fun:

Mime Johann Lippovitz's version of Natalie Imbruglia's Torn echoed across the web....and eventually got him onto to the stage with her.

Do you remember The Dot and the Line?

And, because we must be able to laugh at ourselves...The March of the Librarians.

No comments: