Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Stays Relevant Despite Pulled Content
Gray writes "École Secondaire Mont-Bleu has banned all personal electronic devices and suspended two 13-year-old girls after one uploaded to YouTube a camera phone video of their teacher yelling at the other. After the video was posted on the popular internet video site, the teacher was so embarrassed that he stayed home from work, where he remains on stress leave. The teachers' union is now trying to get all personal electronic devices banned from all schools in Western Quebec." Meanwhile, via the PVRBlog comes word that YouTube has helped raise CBS' ratings by some 7-9%. From that article: "CBS has uploaded more than 300 clips that have a total of 29.2 million views on YouTube, averaging 857,000 views per day, since the service launched on October 18. CBS has three of the top 25 most viewed videos this month (Nov.1-17), including clips from CBS's Tuesday night hit drama 'NCIS,' 'Late Show with David Letterman,' 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson' and 'The Early Show.' The CBS Brand Channel is also one of the most subscribed channels of all time with more than 20,000 users subscribing to CBS programming on YouTube since the channel launch last month."
One is the fact that kids were recording what was going on privately, i.e. these two teachers fighting. Sure one can argue it was done in public, but still. This is a new world, where even the average joe can feel like a famous actor, where any little flub or stupid act they do can be recoreded by 500 people with camera phones, and uploaded to millions of viewers in a few minutes. It used to be you needed to be someone important to be embarassed by millions, now you just need to be in the unfortunate position of being around a cell phone.
As for CBS, good for them. I would rather have an entire episode of a show, with commercials on youtube in a good resolution then to have to watch it on TV, or be forced to record it via dvr, etc.
Main Entry: relevant
Pronunciation: 're-l&-v&nt
Really earning your pay, aren't you, editors
What, Linux doesn't have spell check?
And how many times did you ever go home and tell a parent about how a teacher treated you, and get ignored or dismissed with "They wouldn't do that."
Personally? As much as I'm against the Big Brother society, I'm amused that someone is so scared of how he could be portrayed by an objective viewfinder. And he'll tell us all about how the context isn't there, but there's no good reason why a teacher should be yelling and carrying on to the point where it looks good on video. There's other more effective ways to reach people, and if you can't figure one of them out then there are other career paths.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
The Slashdot article may be ambiguous, but the actual article it links to makes clear it was the teacher yelling at a student, not two teachers yelling at each other.
FTFA: the incident took place a month ago, when one student provoked the teacher into yelling at her while a classmate secretly taped the confrontation.
As Admiral Akbar once said: It's a trap. TFA also mentions that the exact same thing happened at another school in Canada.
We all know how easily video can be creatively edited & pictures can be photoshopped... so short of banning camera phones & (video) cameras, I don't really see how you resolve the issue.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I think that we are FINALLY starting to see all kinds of content, including television content online in some kind of substantial quantity.
I was checking out Comedy Central's clips of the Daily Show like I usually do every few weeks or so, and I was shocked to find that you can stream tons and tons of good content from the Daily Show at a time. I used to have to click and watch an ad for every 1 minute segment, which was almost more trouble than it was worth. Last night, I clicked "play all", and I got several hours worth of Daily Show content, with ads interspersed through out (like TV).
I think it's interesting that TV exceutives are FINALLY starting to notice online viewship. It seems to me that they would've done it much earlier, because tracking advertising online is about one beeellion times more effective than those useless Neilson boxes that give very limited information on a tiny same of the population.
Finally! Hopefully, big media will realise that literally giving away content is good for them in the long run. If this catches on like we've been hoping for years now, the DMCA, copyright laws and its like won't need to be changed, they'll just become irrelevant withg the advent of the new paradigm. (sorry for the buzzwords, folks.)
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
You couldn't pay me enough to be a teacher to primary/secondary student. Well, you could... but it'd have to be one heck of a lot more than a teacher makes now.
Several of my relatives (my generation) have teaching degrees. One now works in a body shop, one owns a flower shop, and the third is back in school learning a new trade.
Kids who deliberately provoke a teacher to film the results don't need to be yelled at so much as slapped around a little. And that's why I'd be a terrible teacher.
My suggestion: Install video cameras in all classrooms. The teachers can film everything, edit to their hearts content, and publish the best bits on YouTube. Must be great fun seeing thousands of creepy little morons being shown to be creepy little morons for everyone to see. Like the bloody idiot who wrote the headline for this submission and couldn't even get the spelling of "relevant" right.
It's ridiculously easy for teachers to abuse their authority. Many often display questionable behaviour in the classroom or elsewhere, the account of which might be met with skepticism when reported to a higher authority, or might simply be flat-out not reported owing to the submissive nature of most students or due to the awkwardness inherent in getting a teacher chastised for an isolated incident.
With the knowledge that lectures are being, or might possible be, recorded by the students themselves, teachers suddenly become accountable for all their actions--as it should be. Banning such videos from youtube, and electronic devices as whole from schools, is a broad handed tyrannical gesture and an affront to student rights and free speech.
What does this word mean? I can't find it in any dictionary!
Don't laugh. I had a calculus professor who thought calculators were a Commie plot to inhibit the minds of Americans.
I think kids should be allowed to have electronic devices because the threat of being recorded will keep bad teachers in check.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Proving once again that you can never have too much overkill.
/. readers who are teachers from Quebec do not take offense becasue there are at least a few good teachers there I'm sure.
Walking a fine line labelled "troll" here...but I had to comment...
I'm not sure what it is, but from my personal experiences with teachers from Quebec, as well as anecdotal evidence from others (my girfriend was raised in Montreal and I know a couple of other Quebecois with similar experiences as well) I now have quite a dim view of the teaching "profession" there. This is especially true with regard to teachers in anglophone schools in Quebec. They are VERY strongly unionised and VERY protective of their own self interests and, quite frankly, a few of them are mentally unstable. I KNOW this is a blanket statement and I hope that any
In any case, I think that there is some sort of systemic problem with public education in Quebec concerning monitoring competency of teachers and providing accountability. Perhaps it has to do with the union having too much control (unions have a purpose but when they are corrupt or the bargaining posisions are not on level ground it can be harmful). It seems very close to impossible to fire a teacher in Quebec--one would have to be convicted of physically or sexually abusing a student to be fired, or some other similar grave justification. That culture is why some people of questionable capability, mental capacity or emotional stability can remain teachers for as long as they want.
From what I understand, teachers with short fuses have been occasionally blowing up on students in Quebec classrooms for decades. We aren't talking about stern corporal punishment in the style delivered by the nuns of the old Catholic schoolhouses here either--we are talking they go all "Kosmo Kramer" on a student. In my girfriends primary school this was the sort of discipline meted out by these real pieces of work:
* Forgetting to bring something for show and tell in Grade I would mean you were ordered to go home and get it...unescorted..even if you lived a couple kilometres away or had to cross major throughfares. The parents wouldn't be notified of this.
* One teacher would throw objects at her students' heads if they were talking when she didn't want them to (chalk, etc). When my girfriend caught flying chalk coming toward her head one day and threw it back she was sent home and told not to come back the next day.
* Locking children in broom closets was a choice method of discipline. Parents were not notified of behavioural problems that justified such a punishment, nor were they asked if it was appropriate to discipline their child that way.
* Yelling and screaming tantrums--by the teachers--was common in some classes.
What happened to detention or going to the principals' office? What happened with informing and involving parents with such issues? Apparently, at least as early as the late 1970s, such practices have fallen out of style in a few schools in Quebec. And guess how complaints from parents are dealt with:
* Denial - your kid is lying or exaggerating
* Defence of the actions by teachers, however inappropriate the parents might think they are
* Promises to stop using such methods on your child--mixed in with threats of legal action should you complain publically about a teacher.
Yes, it is true I've met a couple of great teachers who (at least at one time) taught in Quebec. Former STUDENTS that I know, pretty much without exception, had multiple teachers that were incompetent and/or nutjobs at some point. I was not educated in Quebec myself, and I had my fair share of stupid teachers, but I cannot remember there being as many nutjobs as I've heard about in Quebec. Can't say whay that is aside from something systemically wrong with teacher training/hiring/screening becasue as a whole the Quebecois are among the most wonderful people I've met (thankfully they didn't learn how to behave from their teachers).
What is this guy, a pansy?
When a teacher loses control, there's no excuse.
Pranks like this get caught and lead to kids being punished, but whenever a teacher loses control, that damages their credibility and that of the school's. In this case, both the teacher and students need to be suspended; and they all need counseling. The kids need to be taught not to play pranks and the teacher needs to learn how to maintain control.
We need those student cameras in place in case teachers start shit with the students (i.e., beatings, molestation, etc).
Banning student cameras in this case is like banning cars because someone went on a rampage across a playground.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
why is this misuse?
A teacher yelling at a student should be put out to the world. Maybe the teacher should rethink his behaviour. Clearly he thinks his behaviour is wrong, or it wouldn't bother him.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't know, there seems to be a moral difference between mocking children who have no choice but to be where they are, and mocking adults who chose the profession they are in. Teachers are held to a much higher standard of conduct than students, and for good reason.
The blog Teacher Videos has these sort of negligent teachers on parade. They need to be held accountable for what they're doing.
for mental sanity...
...as opposed to the physical kind? I know what you mean. My left leg is totally barmy. Keeps me awake at nights.
More importantly, wouldn't it cover devices such as artifical pacemakers? I'm sure there aren't many students with them, but flatly banning ALL devices will cause trouble
A friend of mine who is a teacher said to me a few weeks ago that this was common at the secondary school he teaches at now. Infact, some kids are trying to make their teacher lose their temper on purpose just so they can record it and put it on youtube later. Doing this of course makes the kids who did it a hero among their peers, and the teacher very embarassed.
It was a bit pompous but effective. He also said that if his own phone should ring, then he would give everybody in the class 5% score for free on next exam.
So people that absolutely needed to be on call used to approach him at the end of class to negotiate, and they usually kept their phones in vibrating mode and sat close to the door so they could sneak out to answer. To my knowledge he did fail one guy once, and the honor commission upheld the teacher's decision.
There has to be a way to get the same point across rebellious teenagers. Now, I did RTFA and I know this was staged by the girls with the purpose of getting that reaction from the teacher and filming it. I don't think this is an issue of technology, but of education. Some people were asking why should anybody respect authority? I say we should respect EVERYBODY by default, always. Those girls (and apparently many here) should be taught that respect and submission are not the same, and that rules and regulations are not bad per se. A minimum amount of order is needed for society to exist, and sometimes that order implies discomfort for some that would like to do things differently. I think the trick is to really keep that imposed order to a bare minimum, and enforce it.
+Raider of the lost BBS
I'd like to see evidence that "Very rarely is the teacher at fault, I can easily say based on reports I see via NEA and NJEA newsletters nearly half the time the teacher is punished despite 9/10 times the student provoking the teacher."
I'll agree that death threats and violence by students upon teachers are on the rise compared to 50 years ago. But that's a direct reverse from 50 years ago when violence by teachers AND parents upon students were the accepted norm. The only difference between yester year and modern times is the direction of the violence.
I'll also agree that we punish kids too lightly, and that counseling is not always the best solution. But we need to find a middle ground - we certainly cannot go back to the day when kids got the hell beat out of them (remember, folks, violence only begets violence), and we can't have the ultra permissive situation we have today. Kids need to be treated with respect and taught that it goes both ways.
That having been said, banning student cameras won't stop the abuse that they're sometimes used to record. There's no LEGITIMATE reason to deny students that freedom because of a few abusers... that is, unless you desire them not to be in competition with the Government, which is moving toward monitoring everyone 24/7 (currently even moreso in the UK than the US).
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I 100% agree. Banning of recording devices in classrooms puts forth the idea that they have something to hide. If my child went to a school where recording devices were banned I would have to ask that I were allowed to enter the classroom without notice at any time. After all a normal lesson should not cause embarresment or emotional distrass if one was doing nothing "wrong".
So, a teacher does something stupid and gets caught on tape... the response of the school district?
1. Leave (probably paid) for the teacher
2. disciplinary action for the kids doing the filming
3. ban of personal electronic devices in classrooms
Uuuuh, can I be the first to say: WTF!?!!
Can I be the first to say: "This is the exact response to the Abu Grahib pictures incident"?
Immediate ban of cameras in all army prisons, court martial for the ones caught on film, higher ups run free. Creepy, huh?
You can't take the sky from me...
I'm seeing a lot of posts saying "the teacher shouldn't yell" or some other why don't you just reason with them.
I do volunteer work with 13-15 yr olds in the Australian (Catholic) High school system. Kids talk, they're disruptive and don't like authority. From what I've experienced in the school system students are far more disrespectful. I was amazed when I heard students swear directly at teachers. How many of you have to put up with that in your working environment?
Children need to respect the authority of their teachers and be disciplined by them. Parents going on about "suing" are stupid and teaching their children poor skills to deal with life