See the new YouTube EDU Playbook Guide
About
YouTube's own Community Playbook includes Five Engagement Strategies for Using YouTube
Engage with and build a genuine community around your channel and what it stands for.
YouTube provides a unique experience for both creators and audience alike, one that is social and interactive. As a creator, you have the ability not only to foster authentic engagement around your channel, but also the opportunity to interact with these viewers. YouTube gives you a chance to build genuine community around your channel and what it stands for.
Building a community - whether it’s with other creators or your audience - on YouTube means transforming your fans into an engaged and loyal audience, who can then, in turn, serve as a social army to promote your content.
Must have resource included here "YouTube EDU Playbook Guide"
See the new YouTube EDU Playbook Guide
42,284 views 6 months ago
Learn about how one teacher, Mike Christiansen, a 9th grade social studies teacher at Kent-Meridian High School in Kent, WA, uses YouTube in his classroom to transform it into a 21st century learning environment.Students of all ages - learn something new today at YouTube.com/Education!
Teachers: Learn how to incorporate YouTube in your classroom at YouTube.com/Teachers.
Administrators: Sign up to bring YouTube into your school at YouTube.com/Schools.
Information Page about Using YouTube EDU including to apply or nominiate a channel for inclusion.
Learn
Visit YouTube EDU to find short lessons from top teachers around the world, full courses from the world’s leading universities, professional development material from fellow educators, and inspiring videos from global thought leaders. Learn more.
Create
Build a global classroom on YouTube EDU by creating educational videos then uploading them to your YouTube channel. Nominate a channel to be added to YouTube EDU through this form.
Teach
Use YouTube videos to enrich your classroom lessons. Spark a conversation. Make theoretical concepts come alive. Tap into the mind of the visual learner. See how educators like you are incorporating video into their lessons and join the YouTube Teachers community. Learn more.
YouTube for Schools
Access thousands of educational videos on YouTube EDU from within your school network by signing up for YouTube for Schools. Learn more.
Five Reasons Why YouTube Rocks the Classroom Last month, 16 teachers from across the country got together at Google's Seattle office for the YouTube Teachers Studio - a sort of bootcamp to learn how to best use YouTube in the classroom.
There’s a whole host of educational videos out there. From Sal Khan’s famous set of instructional video lessons to the one-off videos by individuals … there’s a lot to sort through. So where do you start? If you’re like me, you go straight over to the king of all video sites, YouTube. They have a dedicated education section (YouTube EDU) where they have a curated list of resources.
See Also: The 100 Best Video Sites For Educators
From the YouTube education channels to the videos to users … there’s a lot there. I figured it’d be easier to get you started (and less scared of the overwhelming wall of video) by showcasing the top channels and other parts of YouTube you may not find by just surfing the web / YouTube.
To begin, here’s the top YouTube Education Channels, sorted by category:
University & College
NPTEL – 10,843 videos
This channel provides technical lectures from all seven Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
UC Berkeley – 5,082 videos
The University of California, Berkeley is the preeminent public research and teaching institution in the nation. From classic literature to emerging technologies, the curricula of our 130 academic departments span the wide world of thought and knowledge. Supported by the people of California, the university has embraced public service as an essential part of its mission since 1868.
MIT – 2,470 videos
The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Stanford University – 1,747 videos
The Stanford Channel on YouTube is an archive of videos from schools, departments, and programs across the university highlighting faculty lectures, events, news, and more.
K-12
Hoopla Kidz- 122 videos
Hooplakidz is an online channel dedicated to animated nursery rhymes and stories designed to entertain and educate children between the ages of 2 and 8.
Space Lab – 235 videos
The coolest space and science facts, courtesy of YouTube!
Sesame Street – 1,329 videos
Sesame Street combed through their video library for the best classic Sesame Street video clips featuring Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Grover, Oscar the Grouch, and the rest of the fuzzy, feathered, and googly-eyed friends you remember from childhood.
Khan Academy – 3,308 videos
From the channel: “It is our mission to provide a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. With this in mind, we want to share our content with whoever may find it useful.”
Lifelong Learning
Animal Planet TV – 2,636 videos
Animal Planet is the world’s only entertainment brand that immerses viewers in the full range of life in the animal kingdom with rich, deep content via multiple platforms and offers animal lovers and pet owners access to a centralized online, television and mobile community for immersive, engaging, high-quality entertainment, information and enrichment.
Google Developers - 1,589 videos
Talks, screencasts, interviews, and more relevant to Google’s developer products.
Justin Sandercoe – 370 videos
All of Justin’s videos are embedded into his website, so it will be a lot easier to find what you are looking for there.
Big Think – 9,207 videos
A knowledge forum featuring the ideas, lessons, stories and advice of leading experts from around the world.
Mich. professor's YouTube course is just right for manyStory HighlightsUniversity of Michigan professor Andrew Maynard focuses on risk scienceVideo provides information in small, short bitesOnly his hand, marker and whiteboard appear on screenDETROIT -- Many universities host large online courses that feature a professor lecturing and guiding students through courses they regularly teach in person. However, University of Michigan professor Andrew Maynard's online education approach is geared toward people interested in a little bit of information on a certain topic, not an entire university course.
In Maynard's offerings, a hand, marker and whiteboard appear on the screen.
The hand begins to sketch a stick figure with a stocking hat on top.
A voice-over asks a provocative question: "Does wearing a hat keep you warm while dancing naked?"
The two-minute, 26-second YouTube video is one of the latest from Maynard, who runs the University of Michigan's Risk Science Center and posts videos at www.youtube.com/riskbites.
That video, posted in late December, explores whether wearing a hat keeps you warm. It's also part of Maynard's effort to combine serious teaching with YouTube.
"Something that has intrigued me is the rise of YouTube as an educational platform," he said.
About six months ago, Maynard started experimenting by posting a simple video on a topic he knows a lot about — risk science.
"What does intrigue me here is that not only is there a lot of cool science behind how we understand and address things that potentially affect our health, but that understanding and reducing risks to ourselves is something that everyone has a stake in," Maynard said. "And in many ways, it's odd that there isn't more information widely available on how to make smart decisions on risk that are based on science rather than guesswork."
All the short videos — there are 17 so far — follow the same basic format and feature Maynard's hand and voice, but never the rest of him.
"I've watched myself a few times," he said. "I'm absolutely awful speaking directly to the camera."
The videos include topics on "Are the Olympics bad for your health?" and "Could eating chocolate get you a Nobel Prize?" The most watched is "Tofurkey, tryptophan and Thanksgiving Torpor" with 3,262 views.
"There's a real hunger out there for science-based information," Maynard said. "If we're going to communicate effectively, we're going to have to give people information in small and short bites."
And Maynard said he thinks university professors are well-positioned to provide that information.
"People who are looking for information are looking for how much can they trust what they are being told," he said, adding that professors and other scientists have credentials that add legitimacy.
The videos haven't drawn a lot of reaction online, but one viewer with the screen name Ben Roberts noted he liked the way Maynard broke down a complex topic.
"I feel like I could show this video to my mom and she would finally understand what I am studying," Roberts posted in an online comment on a video titled "What is Environmental Health Science, and why should you care?"
{ "assetid": "1803171", "aws": "news/national", "aws_id": "news_national", "blogname": "", "contenttype": "story pages ", "seotitle": "Michigan-professor-youtube-course", "seotitletag": "Mich. professor's YouTube course is just right for many", "ssts": "news/nation", "taxonomykeywords":"University of Michigan,Detroit", "templatename": "stories/default", "topic":"university-of-michigan,detroit", "videoincluded":"no", "basePageType":"story" }
How teachers can bring the best of YouTube and other online video services to their students.
It's one thing to talk about Mount St. Helens erupting in science class. It's another thing altogether to watch a video of the mountain's summit exploding into dust. Teachers all across the country are finding that judiciously chosen videos help students engage more deeply with the subject matter, and recall the information they've learned longer.
"A lot of students these days expect information to be presented in a flashy, entertaining way, so videos can help draw them in," says Larry Sanger, executive director of WatchKnowLearn, a site that collects education-related videos. High school student Patrick Greaney still remembers a photosynthesis video he watched in class at Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, that featured a catchy tune. "The song stuck in my head and made me remember the process better," he recalls.
Your YouTube Primer
Though YouTube is blocked in many classrooms because of inappropriate materials on the site, there are many valuable videos that do further learning. The site lists an ever-growing collection of excellent educational content, everything from President Obama's weekly addresses to algebraic demonstrations.
In fact, in late 2011, YouTube for Schools was introduced, an opt-in program that allows schools to access thousands of educational videos from vetted YouTube channels like PBS, TED, and Khan Academy in a safe and controlled environment; the teachers and admins choose what videos are available to their students.
Short of joining the YouTube for Schools program, here are a other few ways to separate the wheat from the chaff:
- Limit your searches to respected sources. Most established newspapers, museums, libraries, radio stations, and institutions have specific channels on YouTube where they collect their content. Just search by the name of the outlet on YouTube (say, the Teaching Channel), and that organization's channel will pop up. From there, you can search exclusively within the Teaching Channel's content.
- Check out the teachers channel on YouTube. It starts with a ten-step tutorial on how to use YouTube in your classroom, with many more tips available if you join the YouTube Teachers Community and sign up for the e-newsletter. Teachers and students can upload videos here or create playlists from those already available, which range from Khan Academy’s explanation of the Cuban Missile Crisis to a rap about the Krebs cycle.
- Try the YouTube education channel. It allows users to search within it for videos on a wide range of academic subjects. Most of the content is aimed at university-level students, but may be accessible for younger ones, too.
When choosing clips for the classroom, keep them short. This gives you time to discuss what you've just shown and its significance to the larger lesson. Once you've identified a video, there are several ways to bring it to the classroom.
First, register with YouTube. Set up a video playlist or a collection of favorites, then click them to stream the videos from a laptop. Just remember that YouTube videos are often removed without notice, so the clip you watched at home last night may not be there the next morning. Also, your school or school district might block access to the site.
Many people are tempted to download videos from YouTube to show them in classrooms where YouTube is blocked. According to YouTube's terms of use, you're not supposed to download unless you see a download link, in order to protect video creators’ rights, so you may not want to take this route.
The good news is that YouTube now offers Creative Commons-licensed videos, which are automatically safe to use. You can even modify or edit them into your own videos using the YouTube Video Editor. Enter specific keywords into YouTube’s main search bar as you normally would (“biology lectures,” for instance), then click on the “Filter & Explore” tab to the far left. In the middle of the drop-down list are the words “creative commons.” Click here and all the videos that appear under your search term will be Creative-Commons licensed.
If the content you’re interested in doesn’t come with a Creative Commons tag, it helps to know that the fair use clause in the Copyright Law of the United States allows the use of works without permission for teaching. Still, the user must adhere to some key regulations that can be vague and confusing.
One thing is clear, though: Any material first published after 1978 is copyright protected. You can find the U.S. Copyright Office's educational-use guidelines (PDF) in Circular 21. The University System of Georgia links to a fair use checklist; you can also email the video's maker for permission.
YouTube doesn't typically offer a way to download and save most videos directly. But if you have permission and would like to download from YouTube, there are a variety of ways the resourceful user can download videos:
- If you use Firefox, you can use the free DownloadHelper extension, which makes most videos downloadable and convertible to several formats.
- Add the word save to the URL before youtube. The URL saveyoutube.com will load with a SaveYouTube toolbar that lets you download the file.
- Many Web sites will allow you to download videos, including Zamzar, YouTube Robot, and KeepVid.
- Convert the video to your playback format of choice (mp4, FLV, HD, AVI, MPEG, 3GP, iPhone, PSP, mp3, GIF) and store it on your laptop or PDA, which lets you access it at any time, even if it's removed from the site.
Other Educational Video Websites
Some choose to skip YouTube entirely and go to teacher-specific online video sites, of which there are many. SchoolTube is a moderated video-sharing website just for schools. TeacherTube and WatchKnowLearn aggregate thousands of videos from educators, YouTube, and the rest of the Web. In essence, they are clearinghouses of educational videos that cover most school subjects, categorized by subject and education level. WatchKnowLearn has a review panel of educators and educational video experts that vet videos from first-time submitters before posting. The Teaching Channel bills itself as "a video showcase of inspiring and effective teaching practices," and publishes great original videos with tips and lesson plans, searchable by subject, grade level, and topic. SnagLearning is the educational branch of SnagFilms, and offers hundreds of high-quality documentary films to be used as educational tools.
Whatever the source, in the end, it's worth the effort. Great content is just a few clicks away.
Jennifer Hillner is a freelance writer in New Hampshire who specializes in technology.
More Edutopia Resources about Teaching with Online Video
DENVER -- Think Twitter is a great professional and teaching tool for professors? You're not alone. But according to a new study, you're in a very slim minority.
Twitter, that most draconian of short-form social media, might have Silicon Valley venture capitalists emptying their pockets and Wall Street investors salivating at the prospect of a public offering. But for all the talk in certain academic circles about how useful Twitter can be for generating class discussions, collecting research data, and reaping the wisdom of faraway colleagues, the overwhelming majority of professors see it as a short sell.
This according to a study released Monday by the Babson Survey Research Group and the e-learning giant Pearson. The study -- which garnered responses from 1,920 faculty (tenure-track and otherwise) at various types of institutions -- was designed and carried out by Babson, which says it ceded no editorial discretion to the education company that commissioned it. The collaborators presented some of the findings here during a session at Pearson's annual user conference.
Probing the uses of nine different types of social media among professors, the study found that professors consider YouTube the most useful tool by far -- for both teaching and non-classroom professional use. Nearly a third of respondents said they instructed students to watch online videos as homework, and about 73 percent said they thought YouTube videos were either somewhat or very valuable for classroom use, regardless of whether they use them currently.
Other Web 2.0 tools fared less well among the professors -- particularly the tools with the most currency in broader culture. Only 2 percent of the professors said they used Twitter in class, and another 2 percent said they used it for professional purposes outside the classroom. Slightly more said they could see at least some value in the microblogging site, but those long-sellers still amounted to less than a tenth of all respondents.
Facebook, too, is tapped in class or for homework assignments only rarely, even if many professors use the site for personal or professional networking. Faculty rate the site's long-term prospects in the classroom only slightly above Twitter's, with 15 percent submitting that it is at least somewhat valuable.
Many professors -- 53 percent and 46 percent, respectively -- think that Twitter and Facebook not only lack pedagogical value but in fact harm classroom learning. (They did not say why.)
Wikis, while not attracting as much negative attention as those two, are still not getting much classroom use, according to the survey. However, faculty see their potential value as higher than Twitter or Facebook, with 36 percent saying they view wikis -- shared documents that can be edited by multiple collaborators -- as having some value in the classroom. (The survey did not distinguish between Wikipedia, the open-source online encyclopedia, which has attracted both scorn and optimism in academe, and other types of wiki, such as the more localized kind living elsewhere on the Web and in learning-management systems. Jeffrey Seaman, the director of the Babson group, said that based on "other results," he would guess that professors using or referring to non-Wikipedia wikis are "very rare.")
Echoing the results of a similar but more limited survey Pearson and Babson did last year, faculty use of social media for teaching or any other purpose did not break along generational lines. There was, however, a slight difference between professors who teach online and those who teach in person, said Seaman. Professors teaching online might be more likely to deploy social media tools to make up for the loss of the social aspect that is built into the classroom environment, he guessed. There was also some variation by discipline, with professors in the liberal arts and social sciences using Web 2.0 tools more frequently than their colleagues in computer and information science, Seaman said.
At the unveiling of the survey findings here, audience members offered some personal testimony of their own experiences using social media. One said she and her colleagues in instructional design use a wiki to share tips and best practices. Another said he lets students message him on Facebook, since some seem to prefer that to e-mail. None, however, said they use social media tools in the classroom.
But Gerald Bergtrom, a biology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, said he is planning another application that involves the principles of Twitter, though not the website itself: he wants to limit students to 140 characters of text when they are formulating hypotheses and conclusions. Why? Because even if some academics would call such a character limit stultifying, there is something to be said for being concise where it counts. "It's not using it as a social medium," Bergtrom says. "It's actually using the 140-character strength to force students to gather their thoughts and state clearly a hypothesis or a conclusion."
In so doing, Bergtrom said he hopes to cultivate a skill rarely associated with Twitter. "What I'm trying to do," he said, "is get them to focus."
For the latest technology news and opinion from Inside Higher Ed, follow @IHEtech on Twitter.
May 25, 2011
Using YouTube to Enhance Student Engagement
By: Michelle Harris in Teaching with Technology
Technology is everywhere. Some people are addicted to it and refuse to live without it. College students will say that their laptop, phone, and iPod are necessities comparable to food. So how can professors remove these technological items from the hands of the student and still keep them engaged in class discussions? Through another form of widely used technology: YouTube. Students enjoy viewing and sharing visual content online. Visual tools create a connection between the content and viewer (McKenzie, 2008). Many videos on YouTube are academic and professional in nature and when used properly will reinforce classroom discussions and engage college students due to the images and audio used (Cardine, 2008).
If this is so, how can this form of technology not be effective in academic learning? When videos incorporate humor, they usually are even more effective making the student eager to see, and learn, more. Hence, students are paying attention. They ask questions. They make knowledgeable comments. This all helps fuel an interactive class discussion.
On numerous occasions, I have used YouTube to drive home a point, expose students to new material, or to have them create debates on the topic. With whatever the outcome was, I was assured that they understood the material and would retain it better than me lecturing to them the entire class period.
Of course a combination of resources is optimal to use but visual aids always seem to make a great impact in conjunction with traditional learning tools. With videos, students can see a scenario, hear from an expert, see images, and listen to conversations that will make the content they are learning more understandable and relevant. In many instances, students experience the “Ah Ha” moment that all teachers get ecstatic about.
I have used videos from YouTube for marketing, management, and entrepreneurial courses and students found them interesting, informative, and funny. Many will ask if video will be used again in future lectures because they were excited about what the video brought to the discussion. I, too, like the excitement this visual aid brings to the classroom. It can be energizing not only for the student but the professor as well. After all, who likes a mundane, redundant process each day? The classroom shouldn’t be so. It is a place where learning, engagement, and creativity is born and dwells. It should be an exciting place to be. Videos give classroom discussion that extra something to keep the students enthralled in their environment. Ultimately, videos assist in the learning process through student engagement. Plainly stated, this tool works.
Dr. Michelle Harris is an Assistant Professor of Management at Paine College.
References
Cardine, S. (2008). Is education ready for YouTube? Converge.McKenzie, J. (2008).
Breaking the YouTube blockade. From Now On.Resources:
Here are a few of the videos I’ve used in my courses.Business Ethics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyf2xjx4mzUOrganizational Change: Scenarios A&B:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhHgMTqw4ew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GGndoC-ZtkTags: classroom videos, teaching tools, teaching with technology
Topics: classroom, education, featured, How To, top 10, ultimate guide, youtube
YouTube is rolling out some big new ways to engage with the education community. Continuing with our look at how YouTube can aid teachers and students, it’s probably a good idea to actually outline exactly how the video service can help in the classroom.
Let’s get started. YouTube is more than just a cute cat video site. It’s matured into one of the biggest resources for educational content ever. While it may not be as organized as Khan Academy, it’s likely got what you need if you do a little digging. You can find videos that make the subject of your lesson more applicable to students’ everyday lives. You can teach students video production and editing skills through projects and upload the videos to your classes YouTube channel. There’s tons of reasons YouTube should be a part of most classrooms:Spark Lively Discussions
Engage students by showing a video relevant to their lives. Video clips can bring in different perspectives or force students to consider a new viewpoint, helping to spark a discussion. Through video you can keep class exciting and new. Students will be eager to talk about chemical reactions after seeing this video:
Organize Your Video Content For Easier Access
- Playlists are YouTube’s way of allowing you to organize videos on the site: a playlist is a series of videos you put together – they don’t have to be videos you uploaded, and you get to choose the order.
- When one video ends, the playlist plays the next video without offering ‘related videos’, thus creating a curated environment for your students.
- Therefore, by creating playlists of videos you can select which YouTube videos you want your students to view.
- Playlists live on your channel, are discoverable in search results (if you want them to be), and can be embedded on your blog or class site.
- Create a playlist of videos for each school unit so students can review them when looking to learn more about a topic or need to review for an upcoming assessment.
- Great playlists include videos that…
- Hook your students into a lesson.
- Provide real-world context for lessons.
- Help provide cultural relevance for your students.
- Provide remediation for concepts yet mastered.
- Provide alternative viewpoints.
- Provide visual context (chemical reactions, primary source videos).
- Review previously taught content.
Archive Your Work
Capture and save projects and discussions so you can refer back to them year after year. This will also help you save time as you can assign old videos to your new students.
- Record critical parts of your lesson so you can review how you taught that lesson in previous years.
- When absent students ask what they missed, send them a link to the video and they’ll never fall behind.
- You can even customize who sees your videos by adjusting the privacy settings. Use this great video to learn how to privately share videos with other YouTube users:
Encourage Students To Dig Deeper
- Give students the option to dig deeper into a subject by creating a playlist of videos related to that concept.
- By creating playlists of relevant videos you allow students to pursue their interests without wasting their time searching for information (or finding potentially objectionable content).
- Create a playlist of primary source video content for a history topic you’re teaching.
- Watch this video to learn how to make a playlist in YouTube
Help Both Struggling And Advanced Students
Videos (or playlists) can help supplement in class teaching for struggling students. Students can review them at home so you’re not forced to teach exclusively to the middle 50%. YouTube user piazzaalexis uses videos like this to address misunderstandings and allow his students to review difficult concepts.
Review For Upcoming Exams
Turn test review and flashcards into easy-to-watch videos so students can hear your explanations as they study. Create a “test review” video students can use to study the night before the big test:
Create A YouTube Center In Your Classroom
Divide your class into groups and have them rotate through different stations. At the YouTube station, introduce students to new information, allowing you to help students practice their newfound skills. When working in stations or centers, have students use your YouTube channel to complete an assignment, freeing you up to work with small groups of students.
Use this video to learn more about creating classroom centers. The teachers uses literacy centers as an example:
Add Quizzes To Videos
Create a Google Form that students complete after watching a video. You can use this quiz to get instant feedback on what they’re learning. YouTube user maxclassroom creates math videos for his students and has them complete their work online using Google Forms. View Example. To learn how to create quizzes using Google Forms click here. Embed your quiz on a class blog or site so students can watch a video and complete the quiz at the same time:
Create Interactive Video ‘Quests’
Use YouTube annotations to create “Choose your own adventure” style video quests.
You can also create a video guide. This example guides students to different videos about chemical reactions.
This video explains how to add annotations to your videos. Learn more about annotations here.
Students Can Become The Teacher
If your students watch a video of the basic concepts at home you can focus in class on applying those concepts, working collaboratively with their classmates rather than simply listening to you lecture.
YouTube user Rmusallam asks his students to prepare for class by watching the introduction to new material at home. That way when they arrive at school they’re ready to apply their learning. Through this method he has dramatically increased his instructional time. If you want to learn more about Rmusallam’s methods visit flipteaching.com or watch the video.
What If YouTube Is Blocked?
Many teachers cannot access YouTube in their classrooms. Never fear, FreeTech4Teachers is to the rescue with 47 Alternatives To Using YouTube In The Classroom. There’s plenty of other options on that terrific list.
How Do YOU Use YouTube?
As you can see, there’s a lot of fun (and free) ways YouTube can help out in your classroom. What are some of the fun and exciting ways you have or plan on using YouTube in a classroom? Whether you’re a teacher, student or parent, it’s always important to stay on top of and at least aware of the best ways to use technology in education. Therefore, Edudemic needs your input! Share your favorite educational YouTube videos with us on the Edudemic Facebook page. We’ll feature them in an upcoming article!
Hi, I'm Chris O'Neal, and we're going to do a brief tour of YouTube. I think of YouTube as, like, a giant video flea market. So lots of cool finds mixed in with a lot of crazy junk. From a teacher's standpoint, it's a treasure trove of videos, so let's take a quick tour. We're going to start off by going to YouTube.com, and on the main page, what you'll find is just a variety of most popular clips of the day, the most talked about clip of the week.
Just like you wouldn't set your students free on a field trip, though, without giving them some guidance ahead of time, you probably shouldn't sit students down in front of YouTube, and have them search aimlessly, either. Whatever your thoughts on YouTube may be, it makes the most sense to give age appropriate guidance to your kids. There's certainly a lot to learn from watching YouTube videos. Some of the content is just not appropriate for all ages.
I'm going to start off by doing the most common thing on YouTube, which is just a basic search. I'm going to click here, and type, life cycle, since that's something a lot of teachers look for. What you'll find are thousands of video returns. It tells me right here, 9,400 videos have been uploaded to YouTube, that use the words, life cycle. I got lucky, in that the first clip I click on right here, will start playing automatically. I'm going to pause it, is actually about the life cycle of the lunar moth, so that's perfect for what I'm looking for. You'll find that searching ahead of time is the key to making efficient use of YouTube in the classroom.
So now that I've found a great video I'd like to use, I can either show it right away-- I'm just going to click play, to show the video, or I can embed it to show it in my own website, blog or wiki. If you look to the right of the video, you'll see a brief description of the video, which is provided by the person who uploaded this video. Directly beneath the description is the URL for this video, so I can e-mail this URL to someone else, and let them watch the video. Directly beneath that is an embed section. If I click in that white horizontal bar, I get embed code, which means I can copy that text, and paste it into a wiki or a blog, or website, and actually embed the video directly into my own website.
Beneath this embed code section are a few options you'll want to pay attention to. The first box that says, include related videos, I always uncheck that box. If you don't uncheck that box, and you embed your video, you'll find, to the side, some extra videos that YouTube suggests, which may, or may not be appropriate for what you want to share with your children. So I uncheck this box. I choose a size that I like, and then I click back up in the embed code section, right click, and copy. Now I simply go to my wiki or blog, and paste in that text.
You can create your own account on YouTube which allows you to save favorites. I'm logged in right now. I can look at my videos, my favorites, I can even make playlists. I can subscribe to specific sections of YouTube, specific users or even tag or keywords. I can also be alerted when users I like upload new videos. The newest section to YouTube that I think teachers like, is YouTube.com/edu. That's an education section of YouTube, built specifically for educators. The videos uploaded in the section are from universities and school systems. Each of these videos is provided with the notion that they can be of some help to teachers. So the users who create these videos agree that all videos uploaded to this specific section, have education in mind.
Last, but most certainly not least, you can upload your own videos to YouTube. Whether you've shot vacation video footage, or you've even staged a video, because you know it will be helpful to other teachers, it's a great place to share video. Not only do you get to catalogue your own video for your specific classrooms, but other people around the world get to make use of your video as well.
Be sure to visit www.edutopia.org, for more educational resources.
Most of my columns have been directed at new professors, but this one may be more germane for experienced faculty looking to try something different, or those whose circumstances have changed.
Put me in the latter category. After six years of special projects and assignments at a research institution where I never had more than two courses per semester, I took a job at a teaching institution. As many know, the latter term generally means faculty members have a heavier course load, departments offer fewer graduate degrees and, hence, there aren’t teaching assistants to help with discussion and grading. A four-course load didn’t daunt me; I used to teach at a 5/5 college, have often voluntarily taught overloads, and came from high school teaching, where I was on duty six periods per day. What I forgot was that was then and this is now! The good news is that the proverb is wrong: you can teach old dogs new tricks.
A scheduling foul-up put me in a situation where I have four classes each day I’m on campus, three of which are the same introductory class. No problems with my elective for majors, but the surveys were another matter – until YouTube and iMovies bailed me out. Some say that stories get better in the telling, but there isn’t much I care to repeat three times in one day. More to the point, the physical grind knocked me for a loop. I simply wasn’t used to speaking for five hours. Of course, I tried other teaching methods, but early in a semester before students know what to expect, prolonged discussion or cooperative group work is as rare as a tap-dancing Teamster. It took me all of two days to figure out that I needed a Plan B.
For those who’ve used it, this statement comes as no revelation: YouTube (and other video repositories like it) aren’t just for music; they are filled with wonderful footage on virtually every subject you can imagine. They are also filled with garbage, ideologically unsound screeds, and amateurish films, so you have to spend time to separate the grain from the chaff. This takes surprisingly less time than you think. A few culling tips:
- Look for videos of under 10 minutes in length. There are uploads of entire documentaries, movies, shows, etc. but you probably can’t devote one or more classes entirely to that source.
- A bad video declares itself so almost immediately. In most cases you don’t need to settle for it. Test-drive another.
- Try to find videos that do more than replace your talking head with another. The idea is to change the class pace, not replicate it.
- Make sure that you watch a promising video to the end before you choose it. Few bad videos become good, but quite a few good ones go bad.
Now comes the fun part. Those who already use PowerPoint in classes can simply copy the URL of the clip selected, paste it into a slide, hit the space bar, and the link becomes "live." Assuming that you teach in a classroom that’s connected to the Internet, all you need do is click on the link within the slide and it will connect to the video. You have instantly created a more dynamic lesson.
In a lesson on imperialism for my U.S. Since 1865 class, for instance, I used a three-minute clip on Fordlandia, a Ford Motors experimental plantation in Brazil.
After some general remarks about imperialism and a few remarks about Fordlandia culled from Greg Grandin’s fine book on the subject, students viewed the YouTube clip. I asked students to comment on the embedded imperialist assumptions of what seems on the surface to be simply a business investment. The clip allowed students to see that imperialism has more forms than simple military conquest; it also allowed them to ponder problems associated with cultural misunderstanding, muse upon the role that idealism played in some imperialist ventures, and consider the short- and long-term effects of overseas adventurism. (In the future I will circle back to Fordlandia and ask students to compare and contrast early 20th-century imperialism with early 21st-century free trade.)
I mentioned that I embedded my URL into a PowerPoint slide. If you don’t use PowerPoint, no problem; you can do the same thing with a projected Word document such as an outline. Simply paste the URL into your document, hit the space bar, and it will turn blue, making it a live link. If you choose clips wisely, students will view archival footage, lectures, or demonstrations that you could waste a lot of breath describing (and re-describing). In a case such as mine, 15 minutes of video footage per class saves me at least an hour of talking and puts students inside primary sources. I like to use several short videos rather than one long one as it gives me the chance to change the flow several times during a single class.
A few suggestions:
- Don’t immediately return to regularly scheduled programming, as it were. As in the example above, take a few moments to ask for student feedback on what they saw.
- A good listening exercise is to ask students to jot down the three major points or details they see in the video. Have your class roster in front of you and call on students randomly to share that feedback. Accept volunteers only after calling on three. (This avoids the “I had the same things” response.)
- Gently push those who don’t wish to speak. You need to send the message that the videos are part of the learning experience, not a "commercial break" in which their minds can turn off.
You may not need to do much of the last suggestion. There in is a message I’d like senior colleagues to contemplate. If you, like I, have been teaching for more than 10 years, you may not have the highest opinion of video. I too assumed that it was, too often, the above-mentioned excuse to tune out. I think I subconsciously bought into the critique that MTV-like pacing was shortening attention spans. Now I think that’s old information that that's no longer the case.
This generation of undergraduates grew up with video, but it’s no longer dazzled by it. It sees video as a ubiquitous vehicle in which information is communicated, but that doesn’t mean that students are any better at evaluating what they see than the pre-video generation was at evaluating what they read.
In essence, our jobs just got a bit harder. Professors are in the decoding business; we teach students textual analysis, the application of theorem and theories, how to evaluate ideas, how to synthesize, etc. To this list add visual literacy. It’s (too) often a buzz phrase in education, but it doesn’t change the fact that professors are uniquely positioned to show students how to think about images, production values, and message manipulation in sophisticated ways. It’s rather sobering to see how much students are amazed when we take a video and begin to deconstruct it for embedded messages.
I've mentioned YouTube in this piece because it’s so easy to use, not because it's necessarily the best source. Nor is it tailored to what any one of us does in the classroom.
To that end, I’ve begun to produce some of my own videos using iMovies. There is a decided learning curve involved in making videos and my advice for this is three-fold. First, take advantage of on-campus instruction on getting started offered by IT staff; seeing how it’s done is way easier than learning from a book. Second, consider uploading your completed video to YouTube as: (a) it’s easy, and (b) it gives you "street cred." (Students are surprised to learn we can enter their worlds.) Third, don’t make the URL public unless your video is good enough to not add to the YouTube clutter, and it won’t get you into trouble. You need to own rights to any images you use before going public, but you can use most things for educational purposes as long as you don’t distribute them.
So give video a whirl, even if you don’t need a physical break. You may find that it revitalizes tired classes. Best of all, you may find that you’re teaching students how to think about images that might otherwise wash over them. Film critic Roger Ebert observed, "Most of us do not consciously look at movies." Professors can make a dent in such ignorance.
Suggested Sources: (This is a very, very small sample.)
1. YouTube: Just type what you’re looking to find. If that doesn’t work, try permutations.
2. TED: Some of the most incredible talks and demonstrations imaginable in the fields of technology, entertainment, design, global concerns, and science are available here.
3. Academic Earth: It offers amazing online videos in many disciplines. The downside is that many of them are long. You should preview them and use segments.
4. Make Use Of has a list of six sites with links to sample classes.
5. So too does Online College Courses.
YouTube.com/Teachers was created to show teachers how to use these videos to educate, engage and inspire their students. YouTube.com/Teachers is part of YouTube's larger educational initiative, YouTube EDU. YouTube EDU is a repository of more than 500k educational videos from leading educational organizations, like Stanford, PBS and Khan Academy.
MIT Understanding Lasers and Fiberoptics
full course by MITLasers are essential to an incredibly large number of applications. Today, they are used in bar code readers, compact discs, medicine, communications, sensors, materials processing, computer printers, data processing, 3D-imaging, spectroscopy, navigation, non-destructive testing, chemical processing, color copiers, laser "shows", and in the military. There is hardly a field untouched by the laser. But what exactly is so unique about lasers that makes them so effective? This brief video cours...
Talk about eating your own dog food: YouTube will use Hangouts to teach video makers how to improve their production skills, according to a blog post published Wednesday morning. The video sharing site announced that the popular Google+ group video chat service will be an essential part of a new round of its YouTube Next Creator programs.
YouTube will start two virtual classes using Hangouts in November, with 16 participants learning how to produce better cooking videos as part of YouTube Next Chef, and 16 others honing their fitness video making skills with YouTube Next Trainer. Both classes will last three months, and partners from eight countries including the U.S., the U.K. and India are invited to apply online at youtube.com/NextChef and youtube.com/NextTrainer, respectively.
YouTube’s Next Creator programs are part of the site’s efforts to support its partners in growing their audience and producing better videos to sell ads against. The site previously organized in-person classes at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and Columbia College Chicago’s Television Department in May.
It looks like YouTube may have found a way to make this kind of mentoring more readily available on an international basis with Hangouts. A Google spokesperson told me that the Hangout lessons won’t be live streamed to a bigger audience, but said that YouTube is looking into ways to share the content from the program more broadly. “The members of the program will also be making videos just about each week and will be incorporating lessons they’re learning,” he added.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.