Information Age Education

Metacafe, An Alternative to YouTube Videos

February 15th, 2007

If you haven’t heard about Metacafe, you’ll be happy to know that there is another company like YouTube on the web. There are a couple of noteworthy similarities and differences between the two companies:

Similarities

You can watch a variety of home, as well as professionally produced, videos.
You can upload videos.
You can rate other people’s videos, if you have an account.

Differences

Metacafe videos are moderated. They aren’t immediately available on the web. I’m not sure how much they screen, but they do have a comment that says, “Do not post p*rn*graphic, excessively violent, illegal, abusive or hateful videos.”
Metacafe allows you to submit your videos for a “Producer’s Award.” If your video meets the criteria and is rated at over 3.0, you can be eligible to be paid for your video. The rating system is an algorithm, which includes viewer rating, comments and some other factors. You can earn $5 for every 1000 views, but payment doesn’t start until your video has reached $100 or 20,000 views.
Metacafe isn’t blocked at my school! So I can use it on my class blog and in the computer lab to preteach and reteach. I’m going to upload all of my videos. (I use rebeccanewburn and newburn as tags on all of my videos so people can readily find them.) I’d be interested to hear if other people can access it from their schools.

Here is one of my videos that I’ve uploaded to Metacafe about Vedic Math, the ancient mental calculating system from India. Whether you are “a math person” or not, you’ll enjoy this one. Promise!