More than funny cat videos, YouTube contains thousands of hours of educational content and videotaped courses, for free, covering topics that range from bioengineering to peace and conflict studies. TED Talks are another phenomenon, drawing 450,000 people per day watching more than 1900 free lectures (doing what David Attenborough has done with nature documentaries since the 1970s!).
YouTube provides a place to learn for both teachers and students. Additionally, it can provide a visual and audible means of learning, which can aid in understanding and retention. The videos are watchable any time and place, can be easily shared, and students can create educational content.
Like a few other tools, YouTube is fairly easy to integrate because it is a platform that students are used to using already. Unfortunately, the concept of using YouTube as a learning tool is new to them, as many of them have only experienced YouTube as a source of entertainment.
Below are a few ways that you can easily integrate YouTube videos into your class for student learning:
1. Trigger Interesting and Unique Discussion
Search for topical videos surrounding current affairs, such as clips from news stories, and ask the class what their thoughts or opinions are. News reports, especially the same story reported by two different news stations, can be a great way for students to deconstruct the motives and impact of competing broadcasters.2. Play Videos of Poets Reading Their Own Work
An excellent resource for literature classes, a video of a writer reading their own work can breathe life into the lines. Stress, intonation, and tone are far more effective when performed by those who wrote the lines!3. Use Short Clips from Documentaries to Provide Context to a Topic
Many large broadcasters upload small parts of documentaries to their own YouTube channel. These are great to use as a part of your lesson planning, and help to bring a 'real world' element to the class, or contextualize historical content.4. Create Playlists to Help with Future Lesson Planning and Share Among Your Department or Students
Once you have made an account, YouTube allows you to create and name playlists that videos can be added to in an ongoing fashion. This is a great way to archive your favorite videos and locate them easily in the future. These playlists can be shared with other users, either in your department, or with your students.5. Engage Visual Learners with Your Lesson Content
No one child learns the same way, and whereas one may experience the 'ah-ha' moment from a textbook, another will get it from a visual explanation.6. Extension Opportunities
Perhaps you want students to have some extra information that you don't have class time to commit to. Or, maybe a video introducing a more complicated area of the current topic can be set shared with students who finish their work more quickly than the rest of the class.7. Create an Assignment that Requires Students to Research and Make Their Own Videos
Students can extend an assignment to write, produce, and edit videos about a specific topic. For instance, if you were looking at advertisement, students could create a video advertising a product and then upload their video to YouTube. You could even have a 'screening' of these videos at the end of the task.8. The 'Flipped Classroom'
Assign YouTube videos as a homework assignment to prepare students for new material in class. This allows you to spend more of the face-to-face time you have with the students engaged in more meaningful discussions, or other learning activities.9. Use Videos as a Writing Prompt
An emotive video can be a valuable resource when planning a creative writing lesson.10. Deconstruct Advertisements
Within the last few years, it has become an important skill to be able to distinguish between legitimate news and unreliable information. YouTube can be used as a resource in practicing these 'analysis' tasks.These are just a few of the ways that teachers bring YouTube into their classroom. Do you have other ways that you use it? Let me know and I can add it to the list!
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