YouTube EDU

YouTube is now available for our Willard students during school hours, YouTube EDU that is.

YouTube EDU is a sub-section of YouTube that contains high-quality educational content from the Khan Academy, Stanford, TED-Ed, MIT, and many other partners. It limits access to non-educational content, disables comments, and blocks advertisements. Students cannot log in to their Youtube accounts or upload videos.

Willard Teachers logged into Novell still have full access to all Youtube and all its features.

ADDING A VIDEO TO OUR EDU CHANNEL

Schools have the ability to make accessible selected videos not included in YouTube EDU. If a teacher finds a video that is not on YouTube EDU that they want students to be able to access during school hours, they can send the web address of the video to their building’s instructional coach to request that it be made accessible. 

STAFF UPLOADING VIDEOS

Teachers can log into YouTube using their Willard Google accounts to upload videos. When at school, teachers must be logged into Novell in order to be able to log into their Youtube accounts. For students to be able to access this uploaded video during school hours, teachers will need to send the web address of the video to their building’s instructional coach so that it can be made accessible.

In the past, I recommended teachers use Vimeo to share their videos. We have had to start blocking Vimeo due to the noneducational content being accessed by our students during school hours.

EMBEDDING VIDEOS

On your class website or in your Moodle course, we recommend that you ONLY LINK to any Youtube videos and not embed them. Embedding the videos does not work on all sites, and can sometimes result in students having full access to the Youtube site.

Recommended Resource: Teachers’ Guide to Using Videos by Catlin Turker

The Magic Happens When…

“The magic happens when we’re all on the same page collaborating and building something together.”

Zamzar Replacement

Many of you will disappointed to hear that Zamzar no longer works to download and convert Youtube videos. The good news is, there is a free replacement for the Windows operating system, Youtube Downloader HD. The version for the Mac that includes download capabilities is not free.

“Youtube Downloader HD is a free tool to download videos from YouTube and save it to your local computer. The videos can be converted to avi video format or to mp4 (compatible with iPod, iPhone).”

For Youtube videos over 10 minutes in length, we recommend that teachers download the file, instead of streaming it from the site. Streaming video utilizes a significant amount of network resources. Our “bandwidth pipe” is only so big and has potentially 1,000+ users. In order to maintain a stable and dependable network, users must be considerate of other users when streaming content.

Installation

1. You can install the Windows version  from our server
   (Lab folder>Video>”youtube_downloader_hd_setup.exe”) or download it from their website.
2. As you click the Next button during the installation process, watch for the option to include a YTD toolbar, which you should UNCHECK. This will slow down Internet Explorer.

Download and Convert a Video

After following these steps, you can double click the downloaded file to play it in Windows Media Player.