Thursday, October 18, 2012

YouTube in the Classroom

Once upon a time, not too long ago, YouTube was little more than cat videos and kids publishing their latest skateboarding moves.  Times have changed.  YouTube is quickly becoming the world's online broadcast platform and as a result has an increasing amount of educational content.

As a matter of fact, last week on World Teachers' Day Google announced that YouTube now has over 1,000 educational channels.  However, there is so much content that one of the trickiest challenges can be sorting through all of it to find the videos you actually want to use with your students.  To make your search a bit easier, here are three places I would recommend starting.

  • YouTube Teachers - Over the past two summers educators across the nation have worked with California's Computer Using Educators (CUE) to develop playlists of curated videos along standards or key concepts.  Once you are on the page scroll past the logo and click on the Classroom Videos tab.
  • YouTube EDU Channels Directory - Many organizations or individuals that with high-quality content construct their own channels.  YouTube has put together a directory of these channels.  Check out the primary and secondary, higher education and lifelong learning portions of the directory.
  • TEDEd - The makers of the famous TED Talks recently started working with educators to create high quality animated versions of their lessons.  All of these videos live on YouTube.  However, searching for them on TEDEd can be an efficient way to find the one you can use in class.
Once you find the videos that are perfect for your class consider constructing a playlist by theme or topic.  Playlists are automatically public, so feel free to share these with other teachers or post them on your website for students to preview for homework or personal learning.  Finally, consider putting your students to work finding content for you.  With a short Google Form (like this) you could easily collect resources for next year. 

Joe

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