Last week I covered an eighth grade U.S. history class. Two periods of "advanced" classes and two periods of "regular" classes.
Mr. C left very reasonable lesson plans. The students had a lot of bookwork. They had two chapters to read along with questions in a workbook. But, to break up the monotony of that, he also assigned a video that I was to split over two days.
(Although, second period was not so enamored with the idea of a video. They whined that taking time from class to watch the video wouldn't leave them enough time to complete the other assignments.)
The video was on YouTube. They had questions to go along with it.
As you may be aware, YouTube will insert commercials from time to time. I tried to minimize these by getting things started before class (catching the commercial before the kiddos arrived). But, alas, I could not set things up so there were no commercials for them to see.
Unfortunately, YouTube's algorithm decided to show the worst possible commercial, not just once, but for each of the four periods...
A cannabis commercial.
I clicked it away as quickly as I could, but eighth graders.
Deep sigh.
Anyway, in case you're interested, the classes are studying the Civil War. And this was the video:
(If you do watch any of the video, check out around 37 minutes, 10 seconds when a few "notable figures" quote the Gettysburg Address.)
The commercials are indeed a problem when we want to show videos to students. Some situations can be embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteYeah, of all the commercials that could come up, why that one?
DeleteIf we are shown ads targeted to our interests, based on searches, purchases, etc. what does that say about the school's account? Schools should be given ad-free access to steaming.
ReplyDeleteYeah, well, considering the students (and yes, at the middle school), that doesn't surprise me at all. Sadly.
DeleteIf youtube is going to force so many ads on every video--usually every ten damn minutes--then they can at least make it not be, you know, drugs.
ReplyDeleteWhat Lisa said! In a way, it was funny (I know, it wasn't) because we were driving in Connecticut and passed a building sign saying "Adult Cannabis Dispensary". My guess is, they got tired of kicking underaged customers out of there. So...yeah.
ReplyDeleteI mean, you have to be 21 to enjoy it legally anyway, so...
DeleteI find that funny. This is something you might see in an Adam Sandler movie. I can't watch the video 'cos I'm in Canada but I hope they get something from this. The Ken Burns documentary is excellent but it's many episodes.
ReplyDeleteMiddle schoolers would never sit still for the Ken Burns doc. They only sat still for this one because I stopped it periodically so they could fill out their answer sheets.
DeleteI never thought about the industrial revolution in connection with the civil war.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how so many things connect that we don't necessarily think about.
DeleteI agree! It's good to learn something new every day.
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