I caught this on Mashable today and I would say that kids, YouTube and toys go hand in hand.
My now 4 year old son was 2 and a half years old when he discovered YouTube. I blame his Uncle (who has now stopped his kids using it of course) and that was it! He became such a case with it, that I ended up using his YouTube observations for a small case study last semester. A case study that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Not only can kids watch recreations of Thomas the Tank engine, Lego and marble games. It also has many indirect educational benefits! Here, at just 4 years of age at the time, he learnt about other countries such Japan, basic film editing and production and how to upload to YouTube. And that is just scratching the surface. Such a connection he had with some videos on YouTube, that he was devastated to find out Flippy Cat had passed away.
I do often meet a lot of cynicism about YouTube in my parenting circles. Parents are very wary of it in the household, particularly where their children are concerned. Of course we want to protect our children from age inappropriate material on the internet. But with supervision, active participation and interest from parents, kids and YouTube can be a very educational mix. I get quite passionate about this, so no doubt I will post more about this later!
That's a good point. I never really thought of YouTube as being educational. This is a great blog and has already made me start thinking about today's technologies/media and education!
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