YouTube for teachers: things you should know if you want to create video in the classroom

With ubiquitous mobile phones and free video editing software like movie maker is has become very simple to make short video and with YouTube and other video sharing sites like video or even Facebook it has become incredibly easy to put them online and share them. Teachers can harness these resources for their classes.

So, here is what you should know about YouTube if you want to use educasts

Account: There are several options for using YouTube in class projects

1. Every student could use their own account and post the link on an LMS like Moodle, a blog or even a separate Facebook group.
2. All the students post their videos to the teacher’s account by email (you find the email address in: settings/mobile setup)
3. The teacher creates a separate account for the class or for a project. All students can upload videos using the same log-in credentials.

Posting: The videos can be posted via web uploader, mobile phones (preferably using Wi-Fi!). Most video editing software like MS Movie Maker or even the simple Google Picasa offer direct upload to YouTube as do many Web 2.0 services that allow you to create videos.

Editing: YouTube has some (recent) basic editing features which include trimming and color correction and a variety of effects, like b/w and cartoon effect, which are not that important for school projects but might add some fun to them. Trimming is probably the most important feature if student upload their videos from their mobile phones (alternatively there are some mobile apps that can do trimming too). Rotating the video might also come in very handy as many students make their videos vertically instead of horizontally (habit of holing the phone). Another feature that is really useful is replacing the background sound with creative commons music (YouTube deletes videos that contain commercial music). 

Channel:  If you create a class project the channel design (background color, images, etc.) should be changed. This is best done by the students themselves because that instills a sense of ownership in them. Here is an example of a project channel which I did with one of my classes. http://www.youtube.com/user/hlwmedia0809