Relevance
YouTube’s sole purpose is to share video. It started with the
tagline “Broadcast yourself!” and becomes the largest online video platform on
the internet not long after it was bought by Google. Even though last year
TikTok beat Google as the most visited website in 2021, the there is no way
YouTube’s relevance will be shaken anytime soon.
Unlike strictly educational video platform like SkillShare,
this open nature makes YouTube’s content highly diverse and that can be both an
advantage and drawback. The fact that you can find any authentic materials or
educational material in one place, that’s huge deal for a lot of people. But unlike
SkillShare’s strictly monitored content, there are bad contents in YouTube. Who
doesn’t remember Elsagate? Also, the fact that YouTube just removed dislike bar
left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth. Because you can find bad pronunciation
tutorial there in no time and because there’s no dislike to like ratio, nobody
knows the video was bad if they didn’t watch it.
I’ll give YouTube 4/4, because it does have strong connection
between its purpose and student learning objective.
Feedback
The thing about YouTube is, everyone can participate. For example,
if a teacher gives the students a question or assignment, they can directly comment
below. Or if the teacher wants to go extra and have students creating video for
assignment, they can do that too. And since everyone can participate, the
teacher can give specific feedback in the comment section. For this, I’ll give
4/4 for feedback.
Ease of Use
YouTube is very easy to use, even Grandma Josephine can operate
it easy. Looking at how mainstream YouTube is as a video platform, I would be
very surprised if students or teachers having a hard time using it. Easily 4/4,
pun intended.
Engagement
Now this is tricky. Objectively speaking, yes students are
highly motivated to use the app for learning. But for the last couple of years
things have changed. Since everyone is on the monitor now, the opposite is
true. Now face-to-face meeting is highly more desirable because everyone is thirsty
of real social interaction. Or at least that’s what I’ve been seeing and feeling
for a while now. Even though I want to avoid virtual engagement, I’ll still
give this one 4/4 to YouTube.
Sharing
Just like what I’ve said in the beginning, the sole purpose
of YouTube is to share. Unlike could storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, and
tools of its kind, YouTube lets you choose how do you want to share your video.
Do you want to share it to the whole world, or do you want only people with the
link who can access it? Or you want to allow only selected people to view your
video? YouTube has it all. 4/4
Accessibility
and Cost
To make things even more convenient, YouTube available both on
desktop and mobile devices. The cost is free but with a caveat, there’s so many
ads. To get rid of the ad, you can use Vanced YouTube on the mobile device or adblocker
in PC, but I’ll be honest, those are sort of illegal. Registering for premium
will cost you IDR 5,900.00 monthly, and that’s a very steep price to pay for
people who live in Surabaya. But regardless the premium, the free version has
the full feature. So that’s 4/4 form me.
Final Verdict
Even though YouTube has its problems, in my opinion it's a superior video platform both for learning purpose or simply for entertainment. Beware though, I'll advice parents to monitor their children when accessing YouTube because that's what responsible parents do.
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