Use Online Video in Your Classroom
How teachers can bring the best of YouTube to your students.
by Jennifer Hillner
Credit: Hugh D'Andrade
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 WatchKnow, a site that collects education-related videos.
Though YouTube is blocked in many classrooms because of inappropriate materials on the site, there are many valuable (and downloadable) 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. Here are a 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, PBS), and that organization's channel will pop up. From there, you can search exclusively within PBS's content.
- Check out the K–12 education group on YouTube. Teachers and students upload movies on this group, which has hundreds of videos on subjects ranging from making angel puppets to footage from a 2004 expedition to the Titanic.
- Go to teacher-specific sites. TeacherTube and WatchKnow 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. WatchKnow has a review panel of educators and educational video experts that vet videos from first-time submitters before posting.
Your YouTube Primer
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. Patrick Greaney, who just finished tenth grade, 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. Once you've identified a video, there are several ways to bring it to the classroom.
- 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.
- In classrooms where YouTube is blocked, download the video. Convert it 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. YouTube doesn't typically offer a way to download and save most videos directly, but if you use Firefox, you can use the free DownloadHelper extension, which makes most videos downloadable and convertible to several formats.
- Add the word kick to the URL before youtube. The URL kickyoutube.com will load with a KickYouTube toolbar that lets you download the file. Many Web sites can help you download videos, including Zamzar, YouTube Robot, and PodTube. According to YouTube's terms of use, you're not supposed to download unless you see a download link.
Although the fair use clause in the Copyright Law of the United States allows the use of works without permission for teaching, 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 in Circular 21. The University System of Georgia links to a fair use checklist; you can also email the video's maker for permission.
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.
This article was also published in the Oct 2009: The Waldorf Way issue of Edutopia magazine as "Plugged In".
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Reader Comments
Why do educators think they can completely disregard YouTube's Terms of Service? What kind of example does that provide for your students? YouTube is clear as day in their terms when they say what you can, and can't, do to watch videos on their site. And, you cannot use a third party tool, app, or site to extract the videos. This entire article shoudl NOT have been written with any info provideed to educators on how to violate the TOS.
http://www.youtube.com/t/terms
4C. General Use of the Website—Permissions and Restrictions
You agree not to access User Submissions (defined below) or YouTube Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Website itself, the YouTube Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.
5. Your Use of Content on the Site
E. You agree to not engage in the use, copying, or distribution of any of the Content other than expressly permitted herein, including any use, copying, or distribution of User Submissions of third parties obtained through the Website for any commercial purposes.
F. You agree not to circumvent, disable or otherwise interfere with security-related features of the YouTube Website or features that prevent or restrict use or copying of any Content or enforce limitations on use of the YouTube Website or the Content therein.
Why Not Download
If You Tube or Google really wanted to prevent the downloading of content they could and certainly would. Google could remove links from search to You Tube downloading tools but they don't. They could go after the developers of You Tube Downloading software, but they don't. They know, as do most educators that their main concern is copyright violations and violators. As we can see in the article, the author points out there are main alternatives and downloading should only be used with videos are inaccessible at school due to filtering or other issues. I would bet that You Tube and Google would agree and proclaim that the You Tube service is a valuable part of the education process. There are 1000's of quality videos that can be, and are used in the classroom, daily.
Media Literacy videos
I have created a page of links to streaming videos related to teaching media literacy. Go to my page on The Media Literacy Clearinghouse web site:
www.frankwbaker.com/streaming_ml.htm
A reasonable filter would make this moot
If schools would use a filter that provided different access according to login, then all this would be unnecessary. A teacher would have access to youtube while a student would not.
Brians' point (below) is right on the mark!
As stated in YT's TOS, you can't use anything other than the download link to get the videos from YT. Doesn't matter if YT is enforcing that or not. And they are enforcing that and have asked companies/people to stop providing tools to extract the vids. The problem is there are thousands of them...and they all should not be used. Downloading should not be used, by educators or students, under any circumstane. If you start to teach students that it's ok to do whatever you want and not follow rules, chaos ensues. You may not care, and think you have a "right" to grab the videos, but you do not.
There's never a cop in my neighborhood...so does that give me the right to run all the stop signs on my way home?
YT is a valuable part of education right now. And, they make it so you can embed the videos into almost any other web site. Schools can allow filters to open up so you can't get to the YT site, but can still watch the videos embedded on other sites (blogs, wikis, etc.).
Links beneath You Tube videos
When using a Mary Pope Osborne YouTube interview on my wiki for my elementary students, I noticed that when the video finished playing there are always other suggested You Tube videos to watch. Is it possible to not have those other choices available? I'm worried that my young students may click on a suggested video that would take them to Ozzie Osborne or any other inappropriate material. I just want my students to see the video I have selected and not be tempted with other video suggestions.
Thanks.
This seems like a great resource for teachers of students with special needs, too.
@Myra: When you grab the embed code from next to the YT video, click the Options/Customize button (the little gear icon). Uncheck the box to "Include related videos." Then, copy the line of embed code and paste it into the HTML view on the wiki page. Otherwise, if you are using something like PBworks where they have a way, inside the wiki tools, to add the YT video, then I don't think you can easily remove the related videos.
Because educators do not personally profit by the download. Not only that, but one study I read indicates that educational downloads of this type exponentially increase regular traffic to the videos, as the students often go on to tell friends and family about the videos. Any video author that complains about an educator that spreads the word about his video is an idiot.
Educators do not personally profit from the downloads. In fact, the video authors do. One study I read indicates that downloads by educators exponentially increase regular traffic to videos, as students often go on to tell friends and family about the videos. Any video author that complains about educators spreading the word about his video is an idiot.