Making Use of YouTube

I love YouTube, the site where virtually anyone can post videos of virtually anything, as much as the next person, but I never thought I’d be using it for learning or for work.  To me, it wasn’t much more than a place to watch really fun stuff people sent me in e-mail forwards, like this or this.  Slowly but surely, I’ve been reconsidering my stance on YouTube.  There’s actually a ton of useful material if you’re willing to dig a little bit to find it.

For example, a few months ago I found a portion of one of my all-time favorite works, The Way Things Go by Fischli and Weiss:

A few weeks ago, The Observer published a list of the “Top 50 Arts Videos on YouTube,” which covers art, literature, and music, and includes things like this interview with Francis Bacon:

YouTube just keeps proving itself more useful.  Earlier in the quarter Sarah showed me some great clips of early 90s all-girl punk bands she was using for her class.  Over the summer, I managed to find a video  Dan mentioned, Claude Lelouch’s 1976 C’était un Rendezvous (admittedly of rather poor quality, but available nonetheless).

My visual resources colleagues at the Architecture school at UT-Austin have found yet another use for YouTube.  They’ve produced several videos to market their services and offer users tips on things like creating PowerPoint presentations.

Videos from YouTube, Google Video, and other sites can be incorporated into your DUVAGA presentations by simply copying the “embed code” (shown below) from the video webpage into DUVAGA.  As long as the video remains on YouTube or Google Video, it will remain in  your gallery.