Building Your Hub
ILMEA Summer Learning Series - Jesse Rathgeber
Tutorials, YouTube, & You
YouTube allows you to bring wonderful content into your classroom. Along with performances of wonderful orchestras or bands at the top of the charts, it also lets you share your own ideas with the world. Using YouTube, you can create differentiated and timely lesson tutorials to help your students. What goes into a great tutoral:
Crafting a Great Tutorial (Dehem, 2013):
-
Has a clear goal.
-
Focuses on the goal in a pedagogically sound manner.
-
Speaks to the intended audience.
-
Is well-crafted in its organization.
-
Uses visuals and auditory aids if needed.
Let's take a look at a few tutorials for "The Cups Song" to see what the internet has to offer:
Generating - Getting It Out There
Having great content is the key to having a useful and much used website. Many tools exist in which you can find great content and, more powerfully, create your own.
This section discusses (click to jump to each section):
Blog It!
BUT WAIT!!! I can't use YouTube at school. Well, my first bit of advice is to ask your administration about it and plead your case. If not, you could always just post your own videos directly onto your website. This takes up a lot of storage, but is a simple workaround. The third option is to take a look at these school friendly YouTube alternatives:
Let's reflect on what we learned.
To the right, you will find an embedded googleform. Fill in your ideas and click submit. This form was embedded useing a simple HTML code. See this tutorial to find out how to do this in WIX.
Blogs provide people chances to share great ideas. In blogs, we can create text and image tutorials, simple prompts, and even can be places for your or these students you work with to share what they have learned that week and other important ideas. Vlogs (video blogs) are another great chance to share content.
Crafting a Great Blog:
-
Focus.
-
Write to your audience.
-
Keep it short.
-
Update it regularly.
Click here to see a list of many class blogs for inspiration. If you are interested in Vlog, check this out from Dr. Robin Giebelhausen (queen of the vlogs).
Free Blog Services:
(removes comments from YouTube)
Presentation Tools
Sharing visual and auditory aids in class is often a wonderful way of hitting home with a concept. You may have had experiences with Keynote or PowerPoint, but there are some web-based services to create wonderful suppliments to any lesson. Students can also create extraordinary content for your website to demonstrate their understanding.
Example Free Presentations Tools:
Here are examples of an embedded google presentation and prezi to show you how they could function in your classroom.
Linking to outside content is okay. Embedding (placing the video directly on your website as I have here) can be problematic, especially if the content itself infringes a copyright. The laws that deal with this are messy and confusing. Here's the basic low-down: Look to see who is credited with creating the content. Click on the creator and do some research. If they truly made the content, like most tutorials, then check on YouTube to see if they agreed to allow embeds by looking under the share section for embed. Most users allow for embedding and they agree to this part of the terms of service:
For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you
hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use,
reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service
and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and
redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media
channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the
Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality
of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to
the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the
Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server
copies of your videos that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you
submit are perpetual and irrevocable. (YouTube Terms of Service, section 6C, 2010)
Copyright & Embedding
YouTube Alternatives
The tutorials above do not include much video editing, but with iMove or Movie Maker, you can edit clips, add visuals, add music, etc. Here are two examples of tutorial takes from my own teaching. One is a recorder lesson by me and the other is a xylo lesson by the talented Lauren Bernacki.