As much as we complained about the mother who posted her daughter for all the world to see, YouTube is awesome. As a lover of all those home videos of young men busting their butts in attempts to prove just how manly (and stupid) they are, YouTube is a gold mine. Granted, most of the videos I watch are on television (God bless The Smoking Gun and their World's Dumbest series), but at least 99% of those videos started out on YouTube. So many so that I actually recognize videos from YT that I later see on TV.
One of my personal favorites is of this young jackass who, having broken his left arm the night before, attempts to jump two flights of steps on inline skates and with the assistance of his friend driving a JEEP. As he launches toward his destination, common sense seems to grab hold of him, and as he hurtles toward sticking his landing, he decides to try and protect his injured arm only to use his good right arm as a battering ram. As he rolls around on the pavement, grasping his arm in a writhing fetal position and bellowing in pain like a 2 ton holstien, his friends cry out, "Someone call 911! He's broken his other arm!" Both tibula and fibula (as he later refers to them at the hospital) are jaggedly snapped in half and protruding from his skin. Some my find this gross, but I call it Natural Selection and laugh my butt off at his expense.
One of our fellow teachers (Caw who teaches Espanol) uses videos from YT to help his students practice adjectives. The kids watch the video and then yell out the adjective (in Spanish of course) that best describes what they've just watched. And, despite what the institution of Education will have us think about YouTube, it works. The kids are much more likely to remember some chuckle head face-planting off the roof of his bi-level onto the cement pool surround than they are the creepily drawn cartoons found in the text book.
I could never get my YouTube video to embed into this post, so here is my link.
One of my personal favorites is of this young jackass who, having broken his left arm the night before, attempts to jump two flights of steps on inline skates and with the assistance of his friend driving a JEEP. As he launches toward his destination, common sense seems to grab hold of him, and as he hurtles toward sticking his landing, he decides to try and protect his injured arm only to use his good right arm as a battering ram. As he rolls around on the pavement, grasping his arm in a writhing fetal position and bellowing in pain like a 2 ton holstien, his friends cry out, "Someone call 911! He's broken his other arm!" Both tibula and fibula (as he later refers to them at the hospital) are jaggedly snapped in half and protruding from his skin. Some my find this gross, but I call it Natural Selection and laugh my butt off at his expense.
One of our fellow teachers (Caw who teaches Espanol) uses videos from YT to help his students practice adjectives. The kids watch the video and then yell out the adjective (in Spanish of course) that best describes what they've just watched. And, despite what the institution of Education will have us think about YouTube, it works. The kids are much more likely to remember some chuckle head face-planting off the roof of his bi-level onto the cement pool surround than they are the creepily drawn cartoons found in the text book.
I could never get my YouTube video to embed into this post, so here is my link.
Still laughing about this; why do we get so much pleasure out of the wrong things? Like today, I felt so empowered after "liberating" that printer; in fact, I felt more accomplished doing that than I have teaching lately.
ReplyDeleteSo often, we are ridiculed for our obvious perfection; therefore, we derive pleasure from seeing the imperfection of others. It's like validation. :)
ReplyDeleteThe real reason you feel so good about sneaking that printer out of Communist Russia goes back, once again, to your Luthern upbringing. We are so afraid of getting in trouble that, when we feel unappreciated and disrespected, the littlest of "crimes" sends us into giggles. We don't have the guts to do anything really wrong, but, by God, we can show "them" who their messing with by taking extra sugar packets in the cafeteria. It's kind of like deleting email without reading it (I think you know of which weekly email I refer). Mwaaaahahaha!
I love that the Spanish teacher used youtube in that way.
ReplyDelete