I bought Minecraft for my 7 year old son and asked him if he needed help with it. “No, I just looked it up on YouTube.” We all know that YouTube is a great source for tutorial videos. Did you know that YouTube is the #2 search engine? Students are very likely to look up information on YouTube, it has become part of their culture. Here are 5 things you can do with YouTube:
1) Record from WebCam
It is quick and easy to record a video to YouTube. This allows you to provide short instructional videos to your students. More importantly it helps to put YOU in the lessons. Making personal connections with students is important. Especially with online materials, putting a personal touch on your work helps students to realize you care about them and the class.
Click on “Upload” in the upper right hand corner.
On the right hand side is an option for “Webcam Capture.” Click “Record” to quickly and easily record yourself via your computer webcam.
Example:
2) Create a Playlist
Rather than having students search YouTube randomly create a list of videos for them to check out. Students can watch individual videos in the playlist or can use the autoplay feature to automatically view the next video in the list.
Search for videos using the search bar. Click on the video title you want to add to YouTube. Below the video is an option to “Add to.” If you already have created a playlist you can click on the playlist you wish to add the video.
Continue to add videos to the playlist until you’ve created a collection of videos. Find the playlist by clicking on the 3 lines icon in the upper left and clicking on the section title of “Playlists.”
Sample
3) Students Submit Videos
If students are creating videos on mobile devices they can upload them to the class YouTube channel. Click on your profile image in the upper right hand corner. Next to “Creator Studio” is the settings cog icon. Click on this to go to YouTube settings.
On the Overview page is an email address for “Mobile uploads.” If students email their video to this email address it will be uploaded to the class YouTube account. Notice the m in the email address. The email address is a funky combination of numbers and letters. You may want to create a contact card using this address. Create a QR code (http://qrstuff.com) out of the contact card to allow students to add the email address to their contacts list.
4) Create a Custom Video Mashup
Some videos on YouTube are too long to share with your students. So long as a video is labeled creative commons you can edit the video to the essential segment. The YouTube Editor also allows you to mash multiple video segments together.
Start by doing a search on the topic you wish to teach. After the initial search is an option to filter the search. Click on “Filters” and filter by “Creative Commons.” You can only edit videos that are licensed as Creative Commons.
Choose the video you wish to edit by clicking on the title. Under the video description is an option to “Show More.”
Clicking on “Show More” expands the options. Below the full description is an option to “Remix Video.”
The YouTube.com/editor allows you to click on the video in the timeline and shorten the length of the video. Drag other Creative Commons videos to the timeline. Note that this creates a new video, it does not alter the original videos.
5) Facilitate a Threaded Discussion
Under each video in YouTube is the ability to add a comment (if comments are turned on). Create a video and ask students to comment on the video using the commenting section.
Suggestion to make the video “unlisted” so that only students in your class comment on the video. An unlisted video can be viewed by anyone with the link, but cannot be found by searching YouTube. (Do not make the video private. You will have to individually type the email of those who are permitted to view the email.)
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Youtube has come a long way in catering to education. They have had great educational videos for years, but content filtering for students has been weak until recently. They dropped Youtube for Schools and Google have finally created a filtering system for Youtube through their Domain Management Console. Under the Youtube Content Management section, the administrator can set the filter to strict, moderate, and unrestricted access for students viewing. I’ve set strict settings for my district and it works! I have not had any problems with first graders using Youtube in my class when given freedom to choose videos. Now that we feel safe using Youtube, the educational possibilities have been exponentially growing. Engagement, inquiry, resources, assessment, and innovation is happening in our classrooms. Thank you Google!