Snapshot of learning for Youtube
Using Youtube as an interactive presentation tool
Contributed by Dave Beehre, Somerville Intermediate School, Auckland
Focusing Inquiry
The majority of students I teach use a variety of social media tools on a regular day to day basis. YouTube is a favourite with them. With 3 billion hits per day, YouTube is the world’s most popular video sharing site. As a Year 8 classroom teacher, I was looking for new ways to integrate the use of social media tools in my classroom programme to help support my students learning in ways which were authentic and current. I came across this particular idea of using YouTube as an interactive presentation tool via Twitter, (where else!) and I could see in it the potential for allowing my students to share their learning in another unique and exciting way.
Teaching and Learning
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Introducing Youtube
As part of our classroom virtues programme, students were given the task of creating a quiz that reflected their understanding of some of the virtues we had been studying. I introduced YouTube at the beginning of the learning sequence to demonstrate how we could make our virtues quiz interactive using YouTube’s spotlight tool. This tool allows you to place clickable areas on your video which will take the viewer to another video based on their choice. Here’s how it works. The viewer watches the first video then chooses one of three options by clicking on the appropriate “spotlight” in the video. This links through to another video, where the viewer is then asked a question and is given three more possible “spotlight” options to choose from. In total, the students filmed 13 videos which they had created in imovie and uploaded to our class YouTube account. In YouTube, they added the spotlights using the ‘Annotation feature’ and then linked their videos together to create a complete interactive YouTube video experience. The steps the students went through to do this are explained in more detail below.
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Mind mapping
The initial planning stage involved the group using a mind map to create video pathways for a series of questions and possible answers to those questions on an A3 piece of paper. The map was displayed in the classroom and also served as a checklist to show which videos needed filming and which ones were already completed. I have recreated this map in Bubblus for the purposes of this snapshot. This image is of one section of the map containing the notes about the virtue ‘integrity’. View full map.
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Filming one of the video snippets
The students filmed 13 videos in total. They also had to select from Youtube, three other videos that represented each of the virtues of integrity, perseverance and respect. These ”bonus” videos that the students chose were linked to the correct answers in the quiz giving the viewer a choice of watching an additional video.
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Video being edited in imovie
Before the videos were uploaded to our class YouTube account, basic editing was done using imovie. The focus here was on selecting the best snippets from the raw video footage. The group decided to keep the bloopers in the final product for the added comedy value.
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Using YouTube’s annotation tools to add titles and captions to the videos
The annotation features can be accessed through YouTube’s edit video section. Here you can choose from a speech bubble, note or title annotation. You also have a choice of a variety of font sizes and colours for your text. Use the timing feature to set when you want your annotation to appear in the video.
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Using the spotlight feature to create multiple hyperlinks within a video
The spotlight feature can be accessed through YouTube’s edit video section via the annotations link. Once you have added your spotlight, you can alter its size and location within the video by dragging and dropping with your mouse. Use the timing feature to set the place where you want your spotlight to appear in the video, see example.
Learning Inquiry
As a result of the teaching, students gained confidence using the media in new and different ways. This was evidenced by the fact that some of the students were very keen to start another Youtube project to support their learning in other curriculum areas.
Students also showed a willingness to cooperate with others and problem solve to reach a shared goal. The nature of the task involved the students having to work cooperatively to problem solve a variety of issues that they encountered while working on the project.
A further result of the teaching was a developing awareness amongst the students that they need to be able to create and publish their own digital products to communicate their ideas just as effectively as they already do with more traditional means, such as writing.
Students now have an understanding of how to edit video within YouTube. In particular, they understand how YouTube annotation works and how the various editing features can be manipulated to suit their own purposes.
Using YouTube in this way also raised awareness of issues around digital citizenship. The students discussed what kind of privacy settings they should set on the videos. Were they comfortable with having their videos being viewed by everyone? Should they allow others to comment on their videos? Should they allow others to share and embed their videos? In the end, the group decided to set the privacy parameters to only allow those with access to the URL link to view the videos.
This also led to further discussion around the importance of students leaving a positive digital footprint for the future.
Exploring an everyday social media tool at greater depth led the students and teacher to ask the question, “What are some other online tools that we currently use, that could be manipulated in order to support our learning in ways that we haven’t yet thought of?
Student / Teacher Reflection
At the end of the process, students were asked to reflect on their learning by answering the following questions in a VoiceThread: I think YouTube is a useful presentation tool because ... The most helpful strategy we used in our planning process was ... The most challenging part of the filming and video editing process was ... I have included my own reflection on the VoiceThread as part of this process as well.
