Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

YouTube Tips and Tricks (September 2020)

A group of teachers interested in Google Educator Certification has started meeting periodically at our school in “Genius Bar Sessions” to dive into different Google products which we use as teachers. This week’s session (yesterday) focused on YouTube. The recorded lesson portion of our meeting is available as a 45 minute video on (where else?!) YouTube.

Our presentation slides are also available.

These resources are linked on the “Genius Bar” professional development workshop page of our school’s instructional support website for teachers, as well as my own “YouTube Tips and Tricks” page.

In the slideshow, I shared direct links to three different categories of “Essential YouTube Skills” for teachers, shared in the official Google Education “Teacher Center.”

  1. Find High-Quality Educational Content on YouTube
  2. Curate Educational Content on YouTube
  3. Create the Optimal Viewing Experience

I also shared my own version of “essential YouTube skills for teachers,” separated into two different categories.

As VIEWERS of YouTube, all teachers should know how to:

  1. Find great videos on a topic (sort / filter search)
  2. Share Links to Google Classroom
  3. Create and Share “Safe Links” (without related videos, comments, distractions, etc.)
  4. Like, Subscribe & History
  5. Ad Blocking via UBlock Origin
  6. Creating and Managing Playlists (create public/unlisted, sort, find later, share links)

As CREATORS and SHARERS of videos on YouTube, all teachers should know:

  1. “The Why” of YouTube comparative benefits of using to share videos versus Google Drive
  2. How to Create a Teacher YouTube Channel
  3. How to Upload Videos (from laptop, from mobile app)
  4. How to change YouTube video visibility options (public, unlisted, private)
  5. How to define YouTube video meta information (Title, Description, Tags, Made for Kids?)

Some intermediate or advanced topics for teacher video creators on YouTube include:

  1. How to create and add video thumbnail images
  2. How to use the YouTube “Creator Studio”
  3. How to do basic video editing in the YouTube Editor
  4. How to find and use copyright-friendly music in YouTube videos

Our next “Google Certification Genius Bar Meet Up” will be October 1st, and our topic will be, “GMail Tips and Tricks!” I’ll continue to post our recorded lesson videos and slideshows on our school’s instructional support site. If you’re interested in the steps and process I used to record our meeting as a “lesson cast,” check out our Lesson Cast support page, which is one type of “Teacher Created Video” we can create and share.

Did I omit or forget any other essential YouTube skills for teachers? Please let me know your thoughts as a comment here or by reaching out on Twitter to @wfryer.

YouTube Tips and Tricks (September 2020) by Wesley Fryer, on Flickr
YouTube Tips and Tricks (September 2020)” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer