YouTube can provide students and educators with hundreds of powerful educational videos that can deepen learning, and we cover finding those videos elsewhere. But a lot of times actually showing those videos to your students requires navigating a minefield of irrelevant results, unpleasant comments and ads featuring people who are going to catch pneumonia unless they put a shirt on.
But it can be done: let’s look at ways to make YouTube appropriate for the classroom.
As social media,Youtube, and gaming become more educationally relevant, how do we leverage their educational potential while keeping student data safe and teaching them digital citizenship?
Lock it down! “We need to keep everyone safe.”
Open it up! “It’s how the real world operates.”
I’ve heard strong arguments for both sides of the coin and have seen successes and challenges in both cases.
NOTE: Whoo, five years is a whole *eon*, in tech time, people. So, the original updated version of this post, first written in 2015, then updated in 2018, remains below, because it will work to set you up for using Google Hangouts for screencasting. But there also two easier ways.
So here’s three ways to use Google Hangouts for screencasting.
One, pair it with screencasting software
Pair it with a conventional screencasting tool such as Camtasia, Screencast-o-matic, Snagit or Screencastify. Open your screencasting tool, then kick off a Google Hangout like you would normally.
Two, turn Recording on in Google Enterprise Suite.
But the updated version is that Google Hangouts have a button that simply turns recording on, if you have Google Enterprise Suite.
Here’s Google’s video tutorial on the topic:
And three, set your Google Hangout to be broadcast On Air.
Which gives you a recorded broadcast at the end.
Original 2018 post. (Oy.)
There are a plethora of screencasting tools available for Mac, PC and Chromebook, but one way to create a super-quick screencast when you want students to be able to see you in the picture, is to use Google Hangout for screencasting. Super useful for Google schools, and did we mention it’s free?
Step-by-step, here’s how to use Google Hangout for screencasting
Name your hangout, give it a description, then click on the X in the green “Public” button if you don’t want the whole thing posted to your Google+ profile. You do need to pick one person to share it with, but it can be your own alternate email address. Click “Share” to get to the Hangout. As shown in this 30-second, audio-free video snippet:
Troubleshooting tip: You do need to verify your YouTube account, if prompted, but it takes seconds.
Yes, I appreciate the irony in having used Camtasia to create that screencast. Stay tuned for “App-smashing and creating instructional blogposts” 🙂
3. Click “Start” to enter the screencasting studio
You’ve been popped over into Google+ and on the lefthand side of the page is a Hangout window. Click the blue “Start” button.
4. Start your broadcast
Now you are in the Hangout window. Click “Skip” to queue up a percentage progress bar at the bottom of your Hangout window. When it’s done, the progress bar will turn to a green “Start broadcast” button. You’ll get a little countdown up there in the corner, then boom! You are now recording from your machine.
5. Screencast with anything on your desktop
To do a voiceover of your slides, hover over the lefthand edge of the Hangout window until a column of icons appears. The third one down is Screenshare. Click it, and choose your slides from the set of options that pop up.
The options will consist of every application you have open, plus your Desktop.
6. Start talking!
Once you choose your slides, navigate over to them on your machine as if the Hangout wasn’t there, and start talking. And what you wind up with as a finished project is something like this:
After you finish the broadcast, what you wind up with is an unlisted YouTube video. And from there, you can decide who receives the url to view the finished project.
tldr; a screencast showing soup-to-nuts how this works
For a complete look at how this works from the driver’s seat, I used Camtasia again to record what this whole process looks like from the back end. (Did I mention the app-smashing for instructional blogposts?)
Troubleshooting tip: obviously, this works best for schools with ready access to the Google suite of products. If, for instance, you find yourself staring at something like this:
Then it’s likely time for an inservice conversation about fettered internet access, security and digital citizenship as a school-wide culture, but that, my friends, is a whole other blogpost.
Yes, you read that right: you can definitely still use an iPad1 in your classroom. Sure, not every app out there will work on it, and the iPad1’s lack of a camera is still fairly insurmountable, but this original version of the revolutionary edtech tablet still has legs, especially if you’re not in a 1:1 situation.
Because remember: at the end of the day, it’s not about the device, but how you use it.
Want to try out writing interactive fiction and games with your students? Here are three tools that make it easy to get started.
In order of ease of use: YouTube
“Choose What Happens Next” is a series of videos that focus on digital citizenship choices for students. You navigate them like Choose Your Own Adventure books.
YouTube’s recently beefed up their suite of online editing tools (including a bank of royalty-free audio clips) and made them simpler to use. By embedding text-based links in video, you can tell an interactive video-based story.
YouTube Pros:
editing tools easy to use
doesn’t require a ton of writing, so caters to visual storytellers
YouTube Cons:
doesn’t require a ton of writing
YouTube may be blocked at your school (but that’s a WHOLE other blogpost)
Next up: StoryNexus
StoryNexus made a big splash when it was introduced via the way-too-addictive speculative steampunk game Fallen London. Players navigate through a virtual, text-based world in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure manner, but with choose-a-card activities that interject an element of chance into the proceedings.
StoryNexus Pros:
Easy and compelling to get really into world-building
Lots of students already on there with games; peers, feedback, ideas
Library of GoogleDocs manuals and crowd-sourced how-to’s
Easy to add images and audio to text
Lots and lots of writing to do, boosts world-building
StoryNexus Cons:
Students need to sign up for accounts
Hard to build a game in one class period
Lots and lots of writing to do
And then there’s Twine
(“Do it for the Twine! I ain’t gonna do–“)
Ahem.
Ashton Raze’s Twine game,”Don’t Read the Comments”, combining digital citizenship with Twin Peaks references.
Twine‘s a challenging little piece of software that takes a step closer to computer programming logic while you build your games. It’s a stellar introduction to the concept of global vs. local variables, for instance*.
Twine games are browser-based, which means you can practice your HTML and CSS skills while you sort out what kind of tea the yeti usually drinks. Yes, I made that game**. It was not entirely easy but the things that were complicated didn’t make me tear my hair out. They were fun to figure out, and as a fan of interactive fiction, I enjoy the pace of the finished product.
Twine Pros:
The ability to embed videos, images and audio make this a truly multimedia storytelling platform
Lets students bone up on HTML and CSS while they write
Twine Cons:
Steeper learning curve than the other two
Here are some lovely related links for you to disappear down the rabbithole of your choice:
In September of 2009, Sarah, the 9 year-old daughter of our keynote speaker posted a 90-second YouTube response to President Obama’s speech to US students. This video “went viral” and currently has over 190,000 views. In May 2010, a 6th grader in our keynote presenter’s hometown attracted the attention of Ellen Degeneres with his YouTube remix of a Lady Gaga song. Greyson Chance is now a household name and national star with a record contract and his own manager. Join this session to discuss the issues raised by these two situations and lessons learned including Internet safety and digital citizenship responsibilities.
Very powerful reflections from 9-year-old Sarah Fryer and her father, educator and technologist Wes Fryer, on digital citizenship for students on video-sharing sites such as YouTube. This podcast captured their presentation, When Student Videos Go Viral, at the Mid-America Association for Computers in Education (MACE) 2011.
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YouTube can provide students and educators with hundreds of powerful educational videos that can deepen learning, and we cover finding those videos elsewhere. But a lot of times actually showing those videos to your students requires navigating a minefield of irrelevant results, unpleasant comments and ads featuring people who are going to catch pneumonia unless they put a shirt on.
