AIBU to think YouTube videos in Year 3 lessons are inappropriate?

Short videos are part of the problem with children's shortening attention spans, not the solution.
Videos can be very useful but I wouldn't want them used too much. Occasional use to show something that can't be easily shown in a classroom is great, used frequently for breaks not so great.

Films as a treat at end of term or as a reward for good class behaviour (DS's class has a jar which the teacher fills with those maths cubes whenever the class or a student has been particularly good and when its full the class votes for a reward which is sometimes a film) are good, something to look forward to and remember fondly while still encouraging longer periods of focus in children

Fascinating thankyou!

I’m thankful of YouTube in school - in an emergency.

I’m a TA and the teacher went off sick this week. I suddenly had to cover class. The RE planning was from last year so the link to the Rama and Sita story didn’t work. Thankfully, it took seconds to find a child friendly version on YT.

I’m not sure how listening to news round daily is a problem either. I’m sure you probably listen to the news daily.

🤣

I seem to be so old that when I was in primary in the sixties we used to listen to schools programmes on BBC radio, although schools TV was used as well. I recall being much more interested in the countdown clock before the programme started than the programme itself. Once on the radio the schools programme was followed by listen with mother and the whole class was allowed to carry on listening to it - because we'd all been brought up with it and it was so part of us. And we had great teachers in a country school. Happy days.

Watching educational videos as a class to support what's being taught - fine.

Watching videos during PE is unnecessary, can't the teacher get the ideas from YouTube and then deliver it themselves??
Why does it have to be done through a screen?

I think the problem is that YouTube isn’t really what you imagine it to be. I don’t let my own kids watch random rubbish on YouTube, but in the classroom it can be an excellent resource if used appropriately. I can’t see the problem with it if used educationally.

This is definitely a huge huge over reaction. They are not being given iPads and left to sit on YouTube for hours.

even when I went to school in the 90s we had a tv for occasions!

my children’s school have Danny go on when the children arrive so they can all dance and get moving to the wiggle dance before lessons

You can watch these on YT now! I showed my daughters Through the Dragon's Eye and they loved it so much they worked their way through the whole series and were begging me to put it on.

A lot of the BBC Bitesize videos are on YouTube. What should the teacher do, have them explaining seed germination over again listening to the same person with the same voice explain it or watch a video with different people and graphics explaining it?

Not everything on YT is crap. Obviously some of it is. My daughter is really into science and maths and I've pointed her to school Tom Rocks vids on YT.

As a parent you can guard against the slop by cautioning your child and saying the long scroll, the shorts and the algorithms can make YT be additictive and have a discussion around that.

That's different. Active learning.
They all sound really interesting and make me want to be in those classes.

I think they are. Hangman is socially interactive and requires use of brain and good spelling. ASMR videos are about as passive as anyrthing can be.

Schools should be helping children learn to unwind through gentle exercise, social connection and playing games or craft activities.

I use video clips a lot. This week, for example:

• in a KS2 RE lesson, clips from video tour of Southwark Cathedral explaining features of a church.
• in KS2 French lessons, several clips with French songs reinforcing vocab we are learning.
• in KS2 Computing, a clip about Mars Rovers showing how binary code is used to send data back to Earth.
• in KS2 Music, a video which was the backing track for the song they are writing their own lyrics for in a unit about songwriting.

It's fine, in the 70s we watched things like playschool and maths in the box. It's the same thing it's just on YouTube now not BBC.

I can, as a teacher, totally see your point around YouTube being the problem because, as parents, we are constantly told its not good. However, as many have already said it is full of great education stuff (as long as you are careful and watch it first) and, most importantly, in today's climate with budget constraints its free. There are other platforms with videos but at a cost (twinkl, for example is quite expensive and teachers often end up paying themselves). I wonder if, as you suggested, someone gathered the videos together, how much they would charge for access!
For what it is worth, as a teacher, I would never use asmr videos even as a brain break. I tend to do movement breaks where they do some go noodle or walk and talk around the room type stuff.

I love Danny Go! But I find it very over stimulating for the age I teach.

YouTube generally brilliant for art and craft videos.

Never understand why teachers use it for ‘relaxing music’ slop. If you must have music whist children are working there’s plenty of actual music from the last thousand years that’s been recorded.

And don’t get me started on those bloody bubbles….!

It can be perfectly appropriate and useful to use video in education, and if this was a treat, fine. But if they're often used, simply as a time filler, not fine.
Details are important too - I hope the teacher has the video 'ready to go' - that s/he just presses 'play', rather than the kids witnessing a random search for something decent (as that really sets a bad example, and is something that the school/parents are hopefully discouraging).

Did your teacher never wheel out the tv when it was a treat day or last day of term?

We looked at the carnivorous plants, the black bat flower, the dragon blood tree, Rafflesia. They found it fascinating.

But why? You tube is just a platform, neither better nor worse than any other. What is watched is entirely the choice of the human. There is a LOT of crap on it but all of that can be ignored and avoided. I pick my clips very carefully and link them through Google classroom. That means only the clip I’ve picked and no adverts etc. screens in schools are the smallest end of the wedge when it comes to the issue of screen time for children.

Teachers definitely need to be vigilant about how many videos they show and screen them for quality. I don’t think the fact it is accessed on YouTube means the videos are problematic. Many videos that are no longer available on BBC Teach or Bitesize are still on YouTube. I’ve also used short clips from films pupils are familiar with to help them understand character motivation before they write about an imaginary character. Children nowadays are rarely avid readers which is reflected in their writing sadly. Short, well chosen videos can enhance learning. It’s not comparable to kids scrolling past endless shorts in their free time.

Great post! A few minutes of a video (YT or VCR) isn't going to be a problem. Parents on their phones, or kids being allowed on screen all the time at home, will be.
Your teachers knew they had 30 students to deal with, and knew the adult to child ratio at home is often close to 1:1.

I think YouTube can be super helpful for learning - my DC will use it for alternative methods of approaching maths problems etc when the teacher's explanations don't quite click. I'm impressed at the level of agency it gives them over their learning even during primary school. I didn't have the option to go on YouTube to find different ways to do long division!