YouTube has revolutionized the way internet users consume video content. Besides being a method of entertainment for millions of people, YouTube is a valuable resource for educators. As a teacher, there are several features that you can use to enhance students’ learning experience.
Privacy and Comments Settings
YouTube provides video uploaders the ability to disallow comments under their content. This can be helpful for teachers that want to keep younger students from coming in contact with toxic users in the comments section. Furthermore, while discourse can benefit the platform, disabling comments can emphasize the content rather than juvenile banter.
Additionally, YouTube’s privacy settings allow the uploader to render their video visible only to those that have the URL of the specific item. This will enable teachers to make the video available to their class alone.
Hyperlinked Timestamps
Timestamps help turn a longer video into a resource that students can consume like a textbook. With the ability to click on timestamps, students can go to specific material using the book’s table of contents. This saves time searching the video for specific sections while also allowing teachers to create one longer video that can be used in several shorter ones.
Captions and Transcripts
YouTube offers an automatic captioning feature. This means that spoken language in the video is converted into captions and can be displayed at the bottom while being played. However, the captions don’t always transfer the speech to text correctly, so subtitling manually is available.
Video transcripts appear to the right of the video and follow the action and speech contained within. The transcript is printable and can be a helpful resource for students that want to keep notes on what was shown in the video.
Blur
Occasionally, you’ll want to include images or text in your video that contain parts you’d prefer not to show. For example, if a person’s information is displayed in the video, you may hide it from plain view.
Luckily, you don’t have to use an outside editing tool to hide something in your video. Instead, YouTube offers a blur function under the “editor” option. You can use this to blur out email addresses, phone numbers, people’s faces or anything else you’d like to keep hidden.
Enable Collaboration
YouTube also provides the ecosystem through which you can foster collaboration. For example, if you would like to join forces with other teachers to present content to your students, you can enable collaboration on your channel. This will give other teachers the ability to upload videos on your channel.
Teaching Students Through Fun Projects
YouTube provides a powerful learning tool in the hands of motivated and creative teachers. The Adobe Education Exchange offers unique resources, including movie poster Photoshop tutorials, to enhance your creativity. Capture the full potential of YouTube and give your students every benefit the popular video platform has to offer.
