YouTube Stays Relevant Despite Pulled Content 279
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."
New trend (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I Know It's Off-topic. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Sorry state of affairs (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:Objective Viewfinders (Score:1, Interesting)
There was an interesting documentary at MIT involving a one of their wearable users. He'd go to a resurant (or other public place) that has a security cammera, wearing his wearable with concealed cammera. He'd ask for the manager and ask about the security cammera, and the manager would reply that it's "there for the safety of others, and unless your doing something wrong you shouldn't be concerned about it." Then, he'd leave, go his car, get a larger decoy cammera and come back and try to get the manager to repeat his ideas "on film," and the manager generally ushered him out of the resturant and didn't answer the questions to the decoy cammera.
I'm all for the right to record in public spaces, because they are *GASP* public. Private spaces should be determined by the owner, but if they are filming/recording, they should have to inform you (as you have the right not to go into such places if you don't wish to).
As for the union... Unions, today, are bloated bueractic agencies that only muddle up things for both the worker and the employer. They used to protect the workers from the employers, but now they are just fat-cat political machines that need to be corrected by strikes from union meetings and boycotts of union dues -- untill they are corrected or untill there are no more unions and workers find other recourse from unfair employment practices.
My $.02
Re:Objective Viewfinders (Score:5, Interesting)
If that's Big Brother, I think I'm probably for it. The problem with surveillance has always been that one side, the "authority" side, has always had a recording. If that recording was favorable to authority's version of events, it could be released. If it was unfavorable, it could be buried. The imbalance invites abuse.
I would be against a system where only the student had a recording. I wouldn't be as much against it as I would be against a system where only the teacher had a recording, because the teacher is already in a position of great power, but I'd still be against it. I might very well be in favor of a system where everybody had, or at least might have, a recording of everything, all the time.
Yeah, that would mean that there'd be embarrassing footage of all of us, because we've all done stupid things we're not proud of. Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal, though... it's kind of hard to come down too hard on Joe for his filmed mistakes, when he can dredge up yours. On the other hand, if somebody has a pattern of behavior, it becomes pretty hard to hide it.
Such a system might be too hard on people, too stressful to live with, too unforgiving of the human need to get away with something once in a while. I'd especially be worried about people getting destroyed over the witch-hunt of the week.
It might also be an improvement over what we have now. The case isn't open and shut... and one could actually do reasonable research to perhaps predict the effects, rather than just having everybody yell about "privacy" like that automatically trumped everything else.
Why? What's so special about authority that it deserves this mystical respect you're calling for? Obviously, people in authority are often right about a lot of things (as well as often being wrong). That doesn't mean they should get an iota more consideration than everybody else. Arguably they should get less slack, since they're in a position to abuse their authority.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Like that, how about these. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:He should've done something (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:To the Teachers... Ha ha, sorry, but f*ck you. (Score:2, Interesting)