One Way to use YouTube as a Teacher

Do you think students go home and share all of the amazing events from a school day? No, students mouths are usually sealed tighter than a crocodile’s teeth around its meal. Except for when students are experiencing emotional distress from parental nagging, students most likely have 1-3 word descriptions about their school day.

I suggest sharing what classroom happenings through YouTube. Maybe it’s not even instructional, but rather just use your YouTube Channel to show images from a day-in-the-life of your classroom. For instance, create a slideshow in an app on your phone or tablet. Then, upload the video to your YouTube Channel through the app. Most video creation apps have an in-app share to YouTube feature.

The following video was created with the Stop Motion iOS app, uploaded to my YouTube channel, and then posted to my blog in a matter of minutes. It’s a great way to bring down the classroom walls and engage parents in strategic instructional moments.

Challenge

Create a YouTube Channel for your classroom and share media with students and parents. After creating your YouTube Channel, develop a plan on how you will create an upload videos on a regular basis. Don’t make it a one-and-done project. Pick the most important content to share and make a series of videos.

Extra Challenge

For a more daring venture, have students create a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly newscast to share with parents. This might actually make things easy for you in the long run. It might be scary to give students the power to create content to put onto your classroom’s YouTube channel; however, make students do the leg work. They will be able to learn how to create media within a team of students.

Of course, you would want to run your idea past your administrator, get written parent permission, and review the content prior to uploading videos. Don’t give students the classroom YouTube password. You should always be the uploader.