Education Technology, Apps, Product Reviews, and Social Media – Edudemic

Topics: classroom, education, featured, How To, top 10, ultimate guide, youtube

• Tweet
• 

• Tweet
• 

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.

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!