Saturday, March 26, 2011

YouTube Lifting Limits - Implications for Education

Yesterday I inadvertently uploaded a video that was just over 16 minutes long to YouTube. Once I realized what I'd done I was surprised to see my video on my YouTube Channel. So I tried another and it worked to! Last year the limit was raised from 10 to 15 minutes. So, being a nerd I searched for an answer.

The help files on YouTube still list the 15 minute limit so I had to go to Google. This turned up a New York Times article. Apparently, last December YouTube began lifting the time limit from some users accounts. Now, I ask, why didn't YouTube tell me I now have no limit? I found out completely by accident. Beyond that, what does this mean?

Well, now I don't have to stress too much about cutting up ideas to keep my videos short. I'll still shoot for 10-15 minutes, but I don't have to worry if it goes to 16 minutes. Additionally, I can now upload full lectures if I choose. This could be huge for education. I try not to lecture anymore, but sometimes I really need to. Now I can record my lectures and easily make them available to my students. Or, we can record presentations at in-services and drop them on YouTube for future staff development. I've used Blip.tv previously and will probably continue to do so. However, now I can have all of my videos on both Blip and YouTube! Redundancy is a good thing.

As an aside. If your school or district currently blocks YouTube you should ask if you can have your channel unblocked. Often times YouTube is blocked due to bandwidth concerns. If only teacher channels are being used the bandwidth requirements should be much lower. And, if teacher videos are so popular that they cause a bandwidth problem then I say that is totally Awesome and that fact should be celebrated!

Anyway, here's the video that let me make this discovery.

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